Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

[171] Rights, some are in the very words of Magna Charta: others are derived from the ancient common law, the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights of 1688, while no less than sixteen may be found substantially in the Virginia Bill of Rights; but these again are in great part derived from earlier fountains.

And now, sir, you have before you for revision and amendment, this early work of our fathers. I do not stop to consider its peculiar merits. With satisfaction I might point to special safeguards by which our rights have been protected against usurpations, whether executive, legislative, or judicial. With pride I might dwell on those words which banished slavery from our soil, and rendered the Declaration of Independence here with us a living letter. But the hour does not require or admit any such service. You have a practical duty which I seek to promote; and I now take leave of the whole subject, with the simple remark, that a document proceeding from such a pen, drawn from such sources, with such an origin in all respects, speaking so early for human rights, and now for more than threescore years and ten a household word to the people of Massachusetts, should be touched by the convention only with extreme care.

An ardent admirer of the stern virtues, and of the heroism, of the Pilgrim Fathers, Mr. Sumner