Influence
The Virginia Declaration of Rights heavily influenced later documents. Thomas Jefferson is thought to have drawn on it when he drafted the United States Declaration of Independence in the same month (June 1776). James Madison was also influenced by the Declaration while drafting the Bill of Rights (completed September 1787, approved 1789), as was the Marquis de Lafayette in voting the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789).
The importance of the Virginia Declaration of Rights is that it was the first constitutional protection of individual rights, rather than protecting only members of Parliament or consisting of simple laws that can be changed as easily as passed.
Read more about this topic: Virginia Declaration Of Rights
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“What do women want with votes, when they hold the sceptre of influence with which they can control even votes, if they wield it aright?”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“A bestial and violent man will go so far as to kill because he is under the influence of drink, exasperated, or driven by rage and alcohol. He is paltry. He does not know the pleasure of killing, the charity of bestowing death like a caress, of linking it with the play of the noble wild beasts: every cat, every tiger, embraces its prey and licks it even while it destroys it.”
—Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette] (1873–1954)