ng 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
assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their
own time, that is to say, within thirty-four years from the date of the
engagement.

To render this conclusion palpable, suppose that Louis the XIV. and XV.
had contracted debts in the name of the French nation, to the amount
of ten thousand milliards, and that the whole had been contracted in
Holland. The interest of this sum would be five hundred milliards, which
is the whole rent-roll or nett[sp.] proceeds of the territory of France.
Must the present generation of men have retired from the territory in
which nature produces them, and ceded it to the Dutch creditors? No;
they have the same rights over the soil on which they were produced, as
the preceding generations had. They derive these rights not from them,
but from nature. They, then, and their soil are, by nature, clear of the
debts of their predecessors. To present this in another point of
view, suppose Louis XV. and his cotemporary generation had said to the
money-lenders of Holland, Give us money, that we may eat, drink, and be
merry in our day; and on condition you will demand no interest till the
end of thirty-four years, you shall then, for ever after, receive
an annual interest of fifteen per cent. The money is lent on these
conditions, is divided among the people, eaten, drunk, and squandered.
Would the present generation be obliged to apply the produce of the
earth and of their labor, to replace their dissipations? Not at all.

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