The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
LAND / LAND OWNERSHIP AND NATURAL RIGHTS
The question, whether one generation of men has a right to bind
another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side
of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to
merit decision, but place also among the fundamental principles of
every government The course of reflection in which we are immersed
here, on the elementary principles of society, has presented this
question to my mind; and that no such obligation can be transmitted, I
think very capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which I suppose
to be self-evident, that the earth
belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither
powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by any individual
ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the
society. If the society has formed no rules for the appropriation of
its lands in severality, it will be taken by the first occupants, and
these will generally be the wife and children of the decedent. If they
have formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it to the
wife and children, or to some one of them, or to the ]egatee of the
deceased. So they may give it to its creditor. But the child, the
legatee or creditor, takes it, not by natural right, but by a law of
the society of which he is a member, and to which he is subject Then,
no man can, by natural right, oblige the lands he occupied, or
the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the payment of
debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might during his own
life, eat up, the usufruct of the lands for several generations to
come; and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the
living, which is the reverse of our principle.
What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of
them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more
than the sum of the rights of the individuals. To keep our ideas clear
when applying them to a multitude, let us suppose a whole generation
of men to be born on the same day, to attain mature age on the same
day, and to die on the same day, leaving a succeeding generation in
the moment of attaining their mature age, all together. Let the ripe
age be supposed of twenty-one years, and their period of life
thirty-four years more, that being the average. term given by the
bills of mortality to persons of twenty-one years of age. Each
successive generation would, in this way, come and go off the stage at
a fixed moment, as individuals do now. Then I say, the earth belongs
to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own
right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and
incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if
the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to
the dead and not to the living.
To render this conclusion palpable, suppose that Louis the XIV and XV
had contracted debts in the name of the French nation, to the amount
of ten thousand milliards, and that the whole had been contracted in
Holland. The interest of this. sum would be five hundred milliards,
which is the whole rent-roll or net proceeds of the territory of
France. Must the present generation of men have retired from the
territory in which nature produces them, and. ceded it to the Dutch
creditors? No; they have the same rights over the soil on which they
were produced, as the preceding generations had. They derive these
rights not from them, but from nature. They, then, and their soil are,
by nature, clear of the debts of their predecessors. To present this
in another point of view, suppose Louis XV. and his contemporary
generation, had said to the money lenders of Holland, give us money,
that we may eat, drink, and be merry in our day; and on condition you
will demand no interest till the end of thirty-four years, you shall
then, forever after, receive an annual interest of fifteen per cent.
The money is lent on these conditions, is divided among the people,
eaten, drunk, and squandered. Would the present generation be obliged
to apply the produce of the earth and of their labor, to replace their
dissipations? Not at all.
I suppose that the received opinion, that the public debts of one
generation devolve on the next, has been suggested by our seeing,
habitually, in private life, that he who succeeds to lands is required
to pay the debts of his predecessor; without considering that this
requisition is municipal only, not moral, flowing from the will of the
society, which has found it convenient to appropriate the lands of a
decedent on the condition of a payment of his debts; but that between
society and society, or generation and generation, there is no
municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. On similar
ground it may be proved, that no society can make a perpetual
constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the
living generation.. they may manage it, then, and what proceeds from
it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters, too, of
their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please.
But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government.
The constitution and the laws of their predecessors are extinguished
then, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them being.
This could preserve that being, till it ceased to be itself, and no
longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at
the end of thirty-four years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act
of force, and not of right. It may be said, that the succeeding
generation exercising, in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them
as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to
thirty-four years only. In the first place, this objection admits the
right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an
equivalent. It might be, indeed, if every form of government were so
perfectly contrived, that the will of the majority could always be
obtained, fairly and without impediment But~ this is true of no form.
The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal
and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative
proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils, bribery
corrupts them, personal interests lead them astray from- the general
interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise, so as to
prove to every practical man, that a law of limited duration is much
more manageable than one which needs a repeal.
This principle, that the earth belongs to the living and not to the
dead, is- of very extensive application and consequences in every
country, and most especially in France. It enters into the resolution
of the questions, whether the nation may change the descent of lands
holden in tail; whether they may change the appropriation of lands
given anciently to the church, to hospitals, colleges, orders of
chivalry, and otherwise in - perpetuity; whether they may abolish the
charges and privileges attached on lands, including the whole
catalogue, ecclesiastical and feudal; it goes to hereditary offices,
authorities and jurisdictions, to hereditary orders, distinctions and
appellations, to perpetual monopolies in commerce, the arts or
sciences, with a long train of et ceteras.
to James Madison, 6 September 1789
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