Post

The earth belongs always to the living generation. I proposed this to Madison in 1789: that no law or debt incurred by one generation should bind the next for more than nineteen years — the span in which, statistically, the generation that made the contract has mostly died. Madison thought this impractical. Perhaps it is. But the principle is sound. Each generation inherits the earth; it does not own it. The living should not be governed by the dead.