...realize the tremendous importance of a principle that, though "self-evident," had been much neglected: "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;...the dead have neither powers nor rights over it." It was possibly a bit unfortunate, with regard to clarity, that a key word in the statement is rare...

...forty-six-year-old Thomas Jefferson wrote the most famous of his thousands of letters, telling James Madison "'that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;...that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it."2 Apart from the opening of the Declaration of Independence, none of Jefferson's words are better...

...the persistent idea that the west was a land of new beginnings. Did not Jefferson famously declare "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it"?2 Yet those who poured through St. Louis in the early 1800s could not so easily abandon their past,...

..."scarcely be considered by succeeding generations," a principle he had earlier stated to Madison as "self-evident," that " 'the earth belongs in usufruct to the living': that the dead have neither the power or rights over it." Adams, however, refused to accept the idea that each new generation could...

...Recht des politischen Eingriffs in die Vermögensvererbung: »... I suppose to be self evident, ithat the earth belongs in usufruct to the living<: that...powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when he himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. If the society...

...question to my mind; and that no such obligation can be transmitted I think very capable of proof. I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident:...that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.1" The text here is characteristic of Jefferson both in the largeness of its claim and in its accompanying...

...clear boundaries between the past and present. Reasoning from his first principle, which he supposes "to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct...the dead have neither powers nor rights over it," Jefferson goes on to consider the political ramifications of his principle.28 For Jefferson, applying...

...either on this or our side of the water.... I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living";...the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.... Then no man can by natural right oblige the lands he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that...

...Erstgeborenenrecht und vor allem keine privaten und keine Staatsschulden geben. Es schien ihm selbstevident, „that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living,...that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it."557 In den Raum projiziert schien das grid einen schlichten Rahmen zu setzen, der im offenen Raum...

...government." His famous conclusion, "I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living,' that the dead have neither powers or rights over it," was held by Jefferson for the rest of his life. In his second inaugural address...