g from the people, and all the power
government now has is a grant from the people. The constitution they
establish with powers limited and defined, becomes now to the legislator
and magistrate, what originally a bill of rights was to the people. To
have inserted in this constitution a bill of rights for the states, would
suppose them to derive and hold their rights from the federal government,
when the reverse is the case.

_There is to be no ex post facto laws._ This was moved by Mr. Gerry and
supported by Mr. Mason,(36) and is exceptional only as being unnecessary;
for it ought not to be presumed that government will be so tyrannical, and
opposed to the sense of all modern civilians, as to pass such laws: if
they should, they would be void.

_The general legislature is restrained from prohibiting the further
importation of slaves for twenty odd years._ But every state legislature
may restrain its own subjects; but if they should not, shall we refuse to
confederate with them? their consciences are their own, tho' their wealth
and strength are blended with ours. Mr. Mason has himself about three
hundred slaves, and lives in Virginia, where it is found by prudent
management they can breed and raise slaves faster than they want them for
their own use, and could supply the deficiency in Georgia and South
Carolina; and perhaps Col. Mason may suppose it more humane to breed than
import slaves--those imported having been bred and born free, may not so
tamely bear slavery as those born slaves, and from their infancy inured to
it; but his objections are not on the side of freedom, nor in compassion
to the human race who are slaves, but that such importations render the
United States weaker, more vulnerable, and less capable of defence. To
this I readily agree, and all good men wish the entire abolition of
slavery, as soon as it can take place with safety to the public, and for
the lasting good of the present wretched race of slaves. The only possible
step that could be taken towards it by the convention was to fix a period
after which they should not be imported.

_There is no declaration of any kind to preserve the liberty of the press,
etc._ Nor is liberty of conscience, or of matrimony, or of burial of the
dead; it is enough that congress have no power to prohibit either, and can
have no temptation. This objection is answered in that the states have all
the power originally, and congress have only what the states grant the