Thomas Jefferson and historical self-construction: the earth belongs to the living?

"The earth belongs in usufruct to the living," Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison on 6 September 1789. It was a "self-evident" principle "that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it." Since "by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation is to another," parents have no moral authority to impose decisions upon children who had no part in making them. The same rule, he contended, should apply to governments. After studying mortality tables and calculating that each generation comprised a majority of the electorate for fewer than two…