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April 9, 2002 8:50 a.m. Amazing Mason A memorial for a forgotten founder.

ll men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights ... among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety," wrote George Mason in May 1776. Two months later, Thomas Jefferson cribbed from Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights while writing the Declaration of Independence — and a good case may be made that Jefferson's version wasn't an improvement.

Mason finally will get his due this morning, when the George Mason National Memorial is formally dedicated on the Mall in Washington, D.C. The event begins at 11:00AM, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist delivering remarks.

Not bad for a Founding Father who opposed the ratification of the Constitution.

It's incredible to think that Mason is getting a memorial at all. Most Americans probably have never heard of him; his Gunston Hall home certainly isn't a household name the way Mount Vernon is, even though they're practically in the same neighborhood. Mason also doesn't have the kind of political constituency that has made possible the erection of war memorials that increasingly clutter the Mall. And at a time when even George Washington is considered controversial in some quarters because he owned slaves, the newest recipient of a national memorial is described by the historian Paul Johnson as "the biggest slave-holder" to attend the Constitutional Convention.

But that's not to say he's undeserving. Mason actually opposed slavery, which he called "that slow poison, which is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people." At the Constitutional Convention, he spoke against allowing any mention of slavery to appear in the text of the Constitution. He also pressed to include a bill of rights — and when none was put in (this was before the first ten amendments were passed), he urged his home state of Virginia not to ratify our country's key founding documents.

That move cost Mason his long friendship with George Washington, and also knocked him out of the pantheon of Founding Fathers. Had he supported the Constitution, his name would be spoken in the same breath as Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. Instead, he went into history as a leading Anti-Federalist.

Yet Mason is clearly an important figure worthy of national commemoration. He supported freedom of religion and freedom of the press long before these ideas became institutionalized in American life. He was a lifelong champion of liberty whose influence improved the United States in its earliest days.

The George Mason National Memorial is located in a place formerly known as Fountain #4 Garden — or commonly as the Pansy Garden — very near the memorial to Thomas Jefferson and close to the foot of the 14th Street Bridge (whose formal name is the George Mason Memorial Bridge, but nobody calls it that). It is a modest memorial, which befits a man who never sought political power, and dominated by a garden, in keeping with Mason's own love of gardening. The centerpiece is a bronze statue of Mason sitting on a bench with his legs crossed and leaning back on his left arm, sculpted by Wendy M. Ross. The statue gazes in the direction of the Jefferson site — a nice touch.

Twelve years ago, President George H. W. Bush signed a bill approving the memorial. It's taken this long for Mason's admirers to wind their way through the web of commissions that must sign off on such things and to raise the money for construction.

The most amazing thing of all, however, is the memorial's mere existence. In our PC age of Sacajawea coins and Frida Kahlo stamps, it's hard to believe someone other than Sally Hemmings is getting a memorial right by Jefferson's. It's a worthy addition to the Mall, and will help ensure that Americans remember a forgotten Founder the way Jefferson himself did: "This was George Mason, a man of the first order of wisdom among those who acted on the theater of the revolution, of expansive mind, profound judgment, cogent in argument."