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_; and it renders the question of reimbursement,
a question of generosity and not of right. In all these cases,
the legislature of the day could authorize such appropriations and
establishments for their own time, but no longer; and the present
holders, even where they or their ancestors have purchased, are in
the case of _bona fide_ purchasers of what the seller had no right to
convey.

Turn the subject in your mind, my Dear Sir, and particularly as to the
power of contracting debts, and develope it with that cogent logic which
is so peculiarly yours. Your station in the councils of our country
gives you an opportunity of producing it to public consideration, of
forcing it into discussion. At first blush it may be laughed at, as
the dream of a theorist; but examination will prove it to be solid and
salutary. It would furnish matter for a fine preamble to our first
law for appropriating the public revenue: and it will exclude, at the
threshold of our new government, the ruinous and contagious errors of
this quarter of the globe, which have armed despots with means which
nature does not sanction, for binding in chains their fellow-men. We
have already given, in example, one effectual check to the dog of war,
by transferring the power of declaring war from the executive to the
legislative body, from those who are to spend, to those who are to pay.
I should be pleased to see this second obstacle held out by us also,
in the first instance. No nation can make a declaration against t