Book Review George Mason, Forgotten Founder by Jeff Broadwater So why is George Mason a forgotten founder?

As Jeff Broadwater notes in his new biography, "George Mason" (University of North Carolina Press, 352 pages, $34.95 ), "during Mason's lifetime only Washington ranked higher in public esteem." An agile debater, Mason had a major impact on the Constitutional Convention. As pri ncipal author of Virginia's Declaration of Rights, his work served as a model fo r the Bill of Rights. Washington and Jefferson regarded him as indispensable to the revolutionary cause. And yet Mason has not been accorded a niche in the pantheon that includes his au gust admirers. Mr. Broadwater canvases the traditional explanations for Mason's eclipse: He died in 1792, "too soon to play a major role in the politics of the federal government." But so did Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, and Paul Rever e, the biographer reminds us. The argument that Mason's anti-federalist disagree ments have not worn well is perhaps more persuasive. Even though he was influent ial in drafting the Constitution, in the end, he opposed it. Mr. Broadwater seems correct, though, in suggesting a more important reason for Mason's "relative obscurity": He wanted it that way. He made no effort to preen for posterity. Indeed, he often had to be virtually dragged from home to play hi s role in the Revolution and in nation-making. He did not seek national office. He did not write his memoirs. Unlike Washington, he did not carry with him a sor t of portable archive that testified to his importance. Unlike Jefferson, Mason did not regard himself as a symbolic figure, representing in his person a body o f ideas and a new form of government. Mr. Broadwater shrewdly links Mason to John Adams. Both men were stout defenders of civil liberties and representative democracy. Mason was the first American t o enunciate in writing an American political philosophy: "[T]he fundamental Prin ciple of the People's being governed by no Laws, to which they have not given th eir Consent, by Representative freely chosen by themselves."This was the America n Revolution in a nutshell. The British Parliament could not dictate terms or ta xes to Americans who thought of themselves as having, in effect, dominion status before there was such a thing as a British Commonwealth of Nations. But like Adams, Mr. Broadwater points out, Mason feared the new republic could f ounder on "unchecked individualism, transient popular majorities, and the inhere nt virtue of the marketplace."Such forces were sure to lead to corruption as they had in Great Britain and to a demagogic chief executive. Mason opposed the Constit ution, in part, because he thought it gave too many powers to a popularly electe d chief executive. Washington as the obvious choice for the first president pose d no problem for Mason, but who to trust thereafter? Mason walked away from the Constitution, in other words, because he did not feel it contained enough checks and balances. He thought, for example, that the federal judiciary had been made too independent and that even federal issues (with a few significant exceptions ) should be settled in state courts. In retrospect, Mason's fears may seem misguided. And yet from his perspective look ing at how the monarchy and Parliament had developed Mason had a point. After the all, Parliament had refused to seat the Whig, John Wilkes, four times (so much f or accepting the will of the people!), and the initial American faith that Georg e III could be appealed to directly as a representative of all the people proved fallacious. While Mason supported a national government with a written constitution, he oppo sed a heavily centralized government in whichWashington, D. C., would function l ike Westminster. And was he so wrong? Take, for example, the issue of slavery. M ason was appalled that such a nefarious institution had been acknowledged and ac

commodated in the Constitution. A slaveholder himself, Mason had evidently witne ssed how owning other human beings corrupted and degraded their owners. He did n ot believe that blacks were equal to whites, but slavery and the slave trade wer e evils he could not condone. I can imagine what Mason would have said about the Dred Scott decision. Didn't it show that not only the legislative, but also the judicial branch, had been corrupted into upholding an immoral institution? This question, however, turned back on Mason himself, befuddles Mr. Broadwater. If Mason so vehemently opposed slavery, why did he not free at least a few of hi s slaves, as Jefferson did, or free them all, as Washington did in his will? "Ma son never seemed defensive about his glaring inconsistency," the biographer obse rves. "In all likelihood, Mason believed, or convinced himself, that he had no o ptions." This last sentence seems to imply that Mason may have been blind to his own hypocrisy. At any rate, Mr. Broadwater concludes, "Mason must have shared t he fears of Jefferson and countless other whites that whites and free blacks cou ld not live together." Beware of the "must haves" of history. In effect, the biographer does not know w hat his subject thought but is keen to have him think it anyway. Call Mason a hy pocrite, if you will, but look at it this way: Mason did not see himself as a sy mbolic figure. He always made a point of saying he was being drawn away from his private life as a planter, father, and husband to engage in public affairs. He was one of the few Virginian aristocrats who kept his own books and made signifi cant profit out of his tobacco farming and land holdings. He operated within the system he had inherited. He did not wring his hands over it. He owed his childr en a debt-free future and a reasonable run at prosperity. To be sure, Mason wanted to abolish slavery, starting by omitting any mention of it in the U. S. Constitution. But any gesture he made as an individual was, to him, trifling or so I interpret his character. He could not stop the virus of slav ery by eradicating it on his own plantation. He argued, instead, for a corporate decision that his colleagues, North and South, were not prepared to make. To see him as I have makes Mason more principled, not less. If for nothing else he should be remembered because he saw that the Constitution a great document, no doubt was also infected with the germ of evil that would spread, in time, to the e ntire body politic.