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 generation.
Then no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during
the course of its own existence. At twenty-one years of age, they
may bind themselves and their lands for thirty-four years to come; at
twenty-two, for thirty-three; at twenty-three, for thirty-two; and at
fifty-four, for one year only; because these are the terms of life which
remain to them at the respective epochs. But a material difference must
be noted, between the succession of an individual and that of a whole
generation. Individuals are parts only of a society, subject to the laws
of the whole. These laws may appropriate the portion of land occupied by
a decedent, to his creditor rather than to any other, or to his child,
on condition he satisfies the creditor. But when a whole generation,
that is, the whole society, dies, as in the case we have supposed, and
another generation or society succeeds, this forms a whole, and there
is no superior who can give their territory to a third society, who may
have lent money to their predecessors, beyond their faculties of paying.
What is true of generations succeeding one another at fixed epochs,
as has been supposed for clearer conception, is true for those
renewed daily, as in the actual course of nature. As a majority of the
contracting generation will continue in being thirty-four years, and a
new majority will then come into possession, the former may extend their
engagements to that term, and no longer. The conclusion, then, is, that
neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself