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 the validity of long contracted debts, so disinterestedly as we, since we do not owe a shilling which will not be paid, principal and interest, by the measures you have taken, within the time of our own lives.  I write you no news, because when an occasion occurs, I shall write a separate letter for that.

I am always, with great and sincere esteem, Dear Sir, your affectionate friend and servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XII.—­TO DR. GEM

THOMAS JEFFERSON TO DR. GEM.