To the home of George Mason other men of note delighted to come. In the guest room Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee, as well as Washington, slept more than once. Patrick Henry, too, was a welcome visitor at Gunston Hall. George Mason had as high an opinion of the orator as Patrick Henry had of the statesman. "He is by far the most powerful speaker I ever heard," Mason once said of Henry; "every word he says not only engages but commands the attention; and your passions are no longer your own when he addresses them. But his eloquence is the smallest part of his merit. He is in my opinion the first man upon this continent, as well in abilities as public virtues, and had he lived in Rome about the time of the first Punic War, when the Roman people had arrived at their meridian glory and their virtue not tarnished, Mr. Henry's talents must have put him at the head of that glorious commonwealth." The orator returned the compliment by calling Mason one of the two greatest statesmen he ever knew. George Mason's statesmanlike vision was seen in 1766, when he warned the British public of the results that would follow coercion. "Three millions of people driven to desperation are not an object of contempt," he wrote. Again he proved a good prophet when he wrote to George Washington, on April 2, 1776, after the General took possession of Boston: "I congratulate you most heartily upon this glorious and important event--an event which will render George Washington's name immortal in the annals of America, endear his memory to the latest posterity, and entitle him to those thanks which heaven appointed as the reward of public virtue." Mason was of a retiring disposition, and he would have preferred to remain at home. But he was forced into the councils of the Virginia Convention, and during his service there he prepared the marvellous Bill of Rights which was later made a part of the Constitution of that State and was the model for similar documents in many other States. He was also the author of the Constitution of Virginia, and the designer of the State seal. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where he proved himself "the champion of the State and the author of the doctrine of State Rights." Because the Constitution as finally drafted by the convention contained so many provisions that he felt were dangerous, he refused to sign the document, "declaring that he would sooner chop off his right hand than put it to the Constitution" whose provisions he could not approve. After the Constitutional Convention for more than four years the statesman lived quietly at Gunston Hall. When he died in October, 1792, he asked to be buried by the side of his first wife, whose death in 1773 had been a grievous blow to him. Over her tomb he had inscribed: