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.

The interest of the national debt of France being, in fact, but a two thousandth part of its rent-roll, the payment of it is practicable enough; and so becomes a question merely of honor or of expediency.  But with respect to future debts, would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming, that neither the legislature nor the nation itself, can validly contract more debt than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of thirty-four years?  And that all future contracts shall be deemed void, as to what shall remain unpaid at the end of thirty-four years from their date?  This would put the lenders, and the borrowers also, on their guard.  By reducing, too, the faculty of borrowing within its natural limits, it would bridle the spirit of war, to which too free a course has been procured by the inattention of money-lenders to this law of nature, that succeeding generations are not responsible for the preceding.

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.