Amendments Proposed to the Declaration of Rights

This is a list of amendments to the Virginia Declaration of Rights made during Virginia’s Fifth Revolutionary Convention in 1776. The convention first heard the draft on May 27 and ordered prints to be made. Debate over the first article, which declared that “all men are born equally free and independent” lasted for days, with Thomas Ludwell Lee reporting to his brother Richard Henry Lee on June 1, “a certain set of Aristocrats, for we have such monsters here, finding that their execrable system cannot be reared on such foundations, have to this time kept us at bay on the first line.”

More amendments were made to the final declaration than appear on this list. The convention edited George Mason’s first article in four places, all listed on this page. The amendments on this sheet also defang article four, in which Mason originally wrote: “the idea of a man born a magistrate, a legislator, or a judge, is unnatural and absurd.” With the amendments, the article reads: “publick services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the Offices of Magistrate, Legislator, or Judge, to be hereditary.”

In the end the amended Virginia Declaration of Rights passed unanimously on June 12, 1776.