I know, we all think about John Locke all the time, right?

I’m reading a book about James Madison, and the writing of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Madison was the author of both the Virginia plan, which was the basis for our system of government, as well as the wording of the Bill of Rights which was submitted as the first ten amendments to the constitution. Pretty amazing accomplishments, and more important than being the Fourth president, for which he is most remembered, IMHO.

But the book also describes a social pariah named Col. George Mason, the next door neighbor to George Washington. In May of 1776, Mason wrote the “Virginia Declaration of Rights”, on which Madison’s Bill of rights is based. Not only that, but he was sent to Congress in June of 1776 to demand the Congress issue a declaration of independence, based on the rights of government in Mason’s Declaration. When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he drew on two significant pieces of scholarship; Mason’s Declaration and Locke’s principles, on which Mason’s Declaration of Rights is based.

So why don’t we know who George Mason is? Well, when Madison refused Mason’s proposal to add a Bill of Rights to the Constitution, Mason said he could not sign the document without one. His refusal to sign the constitution, after working so hard on it for four months with the other delegates, caused his fall from favor with George Washington. And that erased his place in history.

So it goes like this;

1) Most world governments are modeled after the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or the English Bill of rights, written in 1689 by Locke.

2) The Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights are based on the writings of George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights.

3) Mason also based his work on the writings of English Bill of Rights, but with more consideration for Locke’s other writings such as the “Letter Concerning Toleration” and the “Second Treatise on Government.”

4) So if all these great men were refining the ideas of the man before him, where did Locke come up with the original treatise on government that started it all? Surely he didn’t lock his door and write it in an afternoon. He must have drawn from other documents as well.

So my next quest is to figure out where Locke’s notion of the Natural Law and Rights of Man came from.