...society, has presented this question to iny.uiiud; and that no such obligation can be transmitted I thiuk very capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which...that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living. He proceeds to show to his own satisfaction that the sole basis of a right of inheritance is " the...

...jurisprudence2. Fourteen years before 1 " I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, ' that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living,"...the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.... On similar grounds it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual...

...accommodated" (CW, 251), much like Jefferson's claim to James Madison two years earlier that "the earth helongs in usufruct to the living: that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it"39 erases both the past and the future and creates a revolutionary sense of immediacy that resists...