VIRGINIA'S BILL OF RIGHTS AND THOSE OF THE OTHER NORTH AMERICAN STATES.
The Congress of the colonies, which were already resolved upon
separation from the mother country, while sitting in Philadelphia issued
on May 15, 1776, an appeal to its constituents to give themselves
constitutions. Of the thirteen states that originally made up the Union,
eleven had responded to this appeal before the outbreak of the French
Revolution. Two retained the colonial charters that had been granted
them by the English crown, and invested these documents with the
character of constitutions, namely, Connecticut the charter of 1662, and
Rhode Island that of 1663, so that these charters are the oldest written
constitutions in the modern sense.[33]
Of the other states Virginia was the first to enact a constitution in
the convention which met at Williamsburg from May 6 to June 29, 1776. It
was prefaced with a formal "bill of rights",[34] which had been adopted
by the convention on the twelfth of June. The author of this document
was George Mason, although Madison exercised a decided influence upon
the form that was finally adopted.[35] This declaration of Virginia's
served as a pattern for all the others, even for that of the Congress of
the United States, which was issued three weeks later, and, as is well
known, was drawn up by Jefferson, a citizen of Virginia. In the other
declarations there were many stipulations formulated somewhat
differently, and also many new particulars were added.[36]
Express declarations of rights had been formulated after Virginia's
before 1789 in the constitutions of
Pennsylvania of September 28, 1776,
Maryland of November 11, 1776,
North Carolina of December 18, 1776,
Vermont of July 8, 1777,[37]
Massachusetts of March 2, 1780,
New Hampshire of October 31, 1783, (in force June 2, 1784.)
In the oldest constitutions of New Jersey, South Carolina, New York and
Georgia special bills of rights are wanting, although they contain many
provisions which belong in that category.[38] The French translation of
the American Constitutions of 1778 includes a _declaration expositive
des droits_ by Delaware that is lacking in Poore's collection.[39]
In the following section the separate articles of the French Declaration
are placed in comparison with the corresponding articles from the
American declarations. Among the latter, however, I have sought out only
those that most nearly approach the form of expression in the French
text. But it must be once more strongly emphasized that the fundamental
ideas of the American declarations generally duplicate each other, so
that the same stipulation reappears in different form in the greater
number of the bills of rights.
We shall leave out the introduction with which the Constituent Assembly
prefaced its declaration, and begin at once with the enumeration of the
rights themselves. But even the introduction, in which the National
Assembly "_en presence et sous les auspices de l'Etre supreme_" solemnly
proclaims the recognition and declaration of the rights of man and of
citizens, and also sets forth the significance of the same, is inspired
by the declaration of Congress and by those of many of the individual
states with which the Americans sought to justify their separation from
the mother country.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 33: Connecticut in 1818, and Rhode Island first in 1842, put
new constitutions in the place of the old Colonial Charters.]
[Footnote 34: Poore, II, pp. 1908, 1909.]
[Footnote 35: On the origin of Virginia's bill of rights, _cf._
Bancroft, _History of the United States_, London, 1861, VII, chap. 64.]
[Footnote 36: Virginia's declaration has 16, that of Massachusetts 30,
and Maryland's 42 articles. Virginia's declaration does not include the
right of emigration, which was first enacted in Article XV of
Pennsylvania's; the rights of assembling and petition are also lacking,
which were first found in the Pennsylvania bill of rights (Article
XVI).]
[Footnote 37: Vermont's statehood was contested until 1790, and it was
first recognized February 18, 1791, as an independent member of the
United States.]
[Footnote 38: Religious liberty is recognized by New York in an
especially emphatic manner, Constitution of April 20, 1777, Art.
XXXVIII. Poore, II, p. 1338.]
[Footnote 39: Pp. 151 _et seq._
(The translator has reprinted this declaration in an article in the
_American Historical Review_, of July, 1898, entitled "The Delaware Bill
of Rights of 1776".)]