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.
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