Final answer:
Richard Bland's 'Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies' was influenced by Enlightenment principles of rights and liberties as well as ideologies reflected in documents like the 1689 Bill of Rights. These ideas underpinned the American colonists' quest for self-governance and legal equality, which were also promoted by groups like the Freemasons and thinkers like Thomas Paine.
Step-by-step explanation:
In his "Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies," Virginia planter Richard Bland drew on theories advanced by the age's proponents of Enlightenment principles such as the rights to "life, liberty, and property," and the ideas reflected in the 1689 Bill of Rights and Act of Religious Toleration. Bland, along with other colonial thinkers, was influenced by the broader movement of the Enlightenment which emphasized rationality, legal equality, and individual rights, concepts which were in circulating in contemporary intellectual discussions and would have been known by educated colonists like him. These concepts were also a part of the discourse around the development of self-governing institutions like the Virginia House of Burgesses and were echoed in the widespread reading and influence of pamphlets such as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the Freemasons’ promotion of Enlightenment values.