George Mason's greatest accomplishment was being the founding father of the national Bill of Rights. He was a planter from Virginia, had grown up rich on one of the nicest and best plantations in Alexandria, Fairfax County, Virginia.
He was an important member of the town's church, had all the best tutors growing up, and had been raised to be a Virginian aristocrat (Miers 39).
Mason married 'well' and had a large family of nine kids. He raised them in
Gunston Hall, a house which he had built himself (Miers 41).
He was the type of guy who, if he believed strongly enough, did not abandon his beliefs. He strongly believed in the cause for the American Revolution (he had given his son a plantation named 'Lexington'), in citizen's rights, and a non-tyrannical central government (Miers 41). He was known as a great debater, the best that James Madison had ever seen. Mason spoke up many times during the constitutional convention, about different subjects he strongly believed in.
During the convention, Mason was directly and strongly involved with the topics of the electoral college, slavery, the Bill of Rights, and a strong central government (Solberg 280).
He was a bestfriend to George Washington, and around 1760, became involved in
Virginia's politics. Six years later, he was called to Williamsburg to help with
Virginia's Bill of Rights. He took the one that had been drafted before he got there. The thing was incredibly weak, and he took it in hand. Mason proceeded to reduce it to ten simple articles and declarations. It took only four weeks to be rewritten and to go through the system of ratification, with only six more articles added, and all of his big points left in (Miers 41-46).
The Declaration was taken to Philadelphia, to Thomas Jefferson, where he was just about to finish up with the Declaration of Independence. Many of Mason's ideas were 'decorated' and went into the Declaration of Independence (Miers
42-46). George Mason's Virginia's Declaration of Rights was used as the base for almost every other states (Collier 250).
George Mason went to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 with writing a new form of government in mind, though he did not believe in a strong central government. He agreed with the Virginia Plan. The Virginia Plan had two houses of our government, but the population of the state determined the number of repr... ... middle of paper ...
... states are no security," (Leone 27).
Later when George Washington took office, a committee was formed to add a Bill of Rights to the Declaration of Independence. It was the only way to get all the states to ratify the Constitution. They too, used Mason's ideas from Virginia's
Declaration of Rights to draft the Bill of Rights and amend them into the
Constitution (Miers 85).
George Mason was an intelligent, outspoken person who stood up for what he believed in and would not back down. Being the base of the Bill of Rights, which gave America the reputation of freedom, he gave a backbone and a firm ground to stand upon to the United States of America.
bibBibliography
Christopher and James Collier, Decision in Philadelphia; The Constitutional
Convention of 1787 (New York: Random House, 1986), 148, 250.
Bruno Leone, ed., The Bill of Rights; Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego: Greenhaven
Press Inc., 1994), 27, 41.
Earl Schenck Miers, The Bill of Rights (New York: Grusset and Dunlap, 1968), 39,
41-46, 72, 78, 85.
Winton U. Solberg, ed., The Constitutional Convention and the Formation of the
Union (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1958, 1990), 280.
many problems faced by the nation during his time and set standards by which we still follow
As more immigrants immigrated to the colonies and established lives in colonial America, the colonist began to incorporate their ideas of freedoms, rights and tolerance in legal documents. Some legal documents, such as Maryland’s Toleration Act, illustrate the colonists’ belief in freedom and rights often connected to democracy. Other official documents, for...
He uses the people he is closest with as puppets to get what he wants. This can be explained using principles of behavior economics. Through priming, Claudius uses people so that he can cover himself up and maintain a good look to the people while he has his followers do his dirty work. The first instance in which Claudius uses priming to get what he wants is in Act 2 of Shakespeare 's Hamlet, Claudius uses two old school chums Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to come to Elsinore and spy on Hamlet and report his every move to Claudius (2.4.40-41). According to Ariely, people are willing to work for free, and they are willing to work for a reasonable wage (234). Here through priming, Claudius insist for the school chums to deceive Hamlet and to attempt to gain his trust and report whatever he tells them back to Claudius. According to Dan Ariely the subject of the study grossly under stimulated their behaviors
Foner, Eric. "Chapter 9." Give Me Liberty!: An American History. Brief Third ed. Vol. One. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. N. pag. Print.
"Treason, Sedition and Civil Rights in the U. S. Law." Congressional Digest 14.10 (1935): 227-
[4] Hickok, Eugene Jr., ed. The Bill of Rights: Original Meaning and Current Understanding. Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1991
the legacy he left behind, and how when he died the country was never the
...secure the people, and it’s the people’s obligation to obey by the laws instituted to them. He had envisioned a government that wouldn’t abuse the rights of the people. The government can control the people, but the people have a say in how the government should govern them. It was his vision to allow the people to be governed, but still be free. If it wasn’t for Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, then there wouldn’t have been a democrat government. The United States wouldn’t be what it is today, a government for the free people.
the National Digital Library. “The Bill of Rights.” The Library of Congress. 16 Oct. 1996. 2 Nov. 2003. http://www.memory.loc.gov/const/bor.html.
Hickok, Eugene W., ed. The Bill of Rights: Original Meaning and Current Understanding. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1991.
The Declaration of Independence was the key to winning such valuable freedom from the British government. During the years of 1773-1781, America fought drastic battles both orally and physically to win back what they knew they were losing. Freedom was the motivation behind these many trials, victories, and losses, but the forefathers were not to be delayed in their mission. It was not to be dragged asunder. They were determined, as anyone in this situation would be, to free the American colonists of the tyranny and monarchy that had held the new country’s government on a leash. America wasn’t willing to play puppets with England any longer. True, they attempted many forms of negotiation with the mother-country, but England’s pride
Hamlet is a play by William Shakespeare about a prince named Hamlet who was spoken to by the ghost of his dead father telling Hamlet to kill his uncle Claudius (the new king) because Claudius killed him. The story revolves around Hamlet's dillema of how to kill his uncle while being deceptive enough so that no one finds out about the ghost. This essay will prove how deception is often used in Hamlet for many reasons. Claudius uses deception to protect himself from being prosecuted for his crime of killing the King. No one knows what the deal is with Gertrude because she deceives everybody by keeping to herself all the time keeping everyone from knowing anything. By using quotes from the book I will prove how these two (Claudius and Gertrude) and among a few others , use deception for different reasons and in different ways. A lot of the times it is to protect someone, or themselvs because they believe that the truth will hurt more than their lies.
King Claudius, as illustrated in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, displays both charm and eloquence. Claudius is an intelligent person and is able to deceive people into believing he is innocent and morally guided. He is adept at manipulating people in order to advance and maintain his own power and fails to show any remorse for his actions. Claudius utilizes his linguistic skills to portray himself as an innocent and prudent leader; however, upon further inspection his diction is a mere smoke screen that hides his manipulative and cunning nature.
The problem of water scarcity has increasingly spread throughout the world as of yet, The UN reports that within the next half- century up to 7 billion people in 60 countries which is more than the whole present population will face water scarcity (Sawin “Water Scarcity could Overwhelm the Next Generation”). As well the demand for freshwater has tripled over the past 50 years, and is continuing to rise as a result of population growth and economic development. 70% of this demand derives from agriculture which shows the influence of water on food supply globally as well not just drinking water (Sawin “Water Scarcity could overwhelm the Next Generation”). But increasing water use is not just a matter of the greater number of people needing it to drink and eat; it also comes from pollution and misuse of water supplies, by either dumping or runoff of bacteria or chemicals into water. This also “causes other pollutions as well such as soil and air pollution, accelerating wetland damage and human caused global warming” (Smith and Thomassey 25). According to UN report, recent estimates suggest that climate change will account for about 20 percent of the increase in global water scarcity in coming decades.
Freshwater is quite scarce, but it is even scarcer than one might think: about seventy percent of all freshwater is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland and is unavailable to humans. Most of the remainder is present as soil moisture or lies in deep underground aquifers as groundwater. It is not economically feasible to extract this waster for use as drinking water. This leaves less than one percent of the world’s fresh water that is available to humans. It includes the water found in lakes, reservoirs, groundwater that is shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost. These freshwater sources are the only sources that are frequently replenished by rain and snowfall, and therefore are renewable. At the current rates of consumption, however, this supply of fresh water will not last. Pollution and contamination of freshwater sources exacerbate the problem, further reducing the amount of freshwater available for human consumption. Something must be done if humans want to even survive in the near future: the lack of clean drinking water is already the number one cause of disease in the world today. The first step is worldwide awareness of the water crisis: governments and the citizens they govern worldwide need to know about this problem and be actively involved in solving this problem.