The contemporary issue to which Jefferson's arguments most literally apply is the problem of topsoil depletion.
As a planter in predominantly agrarian Virginia, who tended to view wealth as the direct or indirect product
of the earth, f130 it was natural
for Jefferson to phrase his discussions of intergenerational relations -- even intergenerational economic relations
-- in terms of soil:
"Are [later generations] bound to acknowledge [a national debt created to satisfy short-term interests], to consider the preceding generation as having had a right to eat up the whole soil of their country, in the course of a life . . .? Every one will say no; that the soil is the gift of God to the living, as much as it had been to the deceased generation; and that the laws of nature impose no obligation on them to pay this debt." f131
Jefferson asserts that each generation has the right to inherit, undiminished, the same topsoil capital that its predecessors enjoyed. f132 Our society's failure to recognize and defend this most basic principle of intergenerational fairness during the past century has resulted in topsoil depletion that has reached crisis proportions. Soon we may have literally and irreparably "eaten up the whole soil of our country." f133
Of course, the principle applies to a myriad of resources other than soil. For instance, the extermination of a salmon fishery, through shortsighted hydropower, irrigation or logging policies, would also constitute an "eating up of usufruct," as would the depletion of a freshwater aquifer that takes centuries to recharge itself. f134
Jefferson also emphasizes the relevance of intergenerational equity principles to what would today be characterized
as "takings" issues:
"It [generational sovereignty] enters into the resolution of the questions Whether the nation may change
the descent of lands holden in tail? Whether they may change the appropriation of lands given . . . in perpetuity?
Whether they may abolish the charges and privileges attached on lands . . .? . . . and it renders the question
of reimbursement a question of generosity and not of right. In all these cases, the legislature of the day could
authorize such appropriations and establishments for their own time, but no longer; and the present holders,
even where they, or their ancestors, have purchased, are in the case of bona fide purchasers of what the seller
had no right to convey." f135
Jefferson accepts the traditional notion that the land and the other resources of the earth belong to all generations
in common. He further insists that no generation of citizens, acting individually or collectively, may rightfully
prejudice later generations' equal enjoyment of that land and those resources. f136
If a government or agent of government attempts to convey or define a property interest that would allow the
beneficiary to unfairly prejudice the interests of later generations, Jefferson's view is that said agent exceeds
his/her/its authority. Jefferson unequivocally insists that such purported property rights may be revoked by
later generations without compensation.
Jefferson's attitudes on intergenerational obligation were far from anomalous. The same authorities that shaped
Jefferson's conception of the earth as an intergenerational commons -- authorities such as Plato, the Old Testament
prophets, Aquinas, Locke, and Sidney f137-
also helped to shape the views of his contemporaries. The biblical notion that God granted the world to Adam
and his posterity in common was part of mainstream English and American legal tradition. f138
James Madison, the recipient of Jefferson's seminal letter, while concerned that some of his friend's intergenerational
reasoning might be ahead of its time, f139 felt that "the idea which the [letter] evolves is a great one
. . .".f140 In his exhaustive
examination of Jefferson's generational theories, Herbert Sloan remarks that, "what makes Jefferson's views
important . . . is not so much that he held them, but that they were widely shared." f141
The conviction that no person could acquire a perpetual interest in the earth f142 was also common coin. In his Agrarian Justice, Paine reminded his readers that:
"There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not make the earth, and, though he
had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity
any part of it: neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should
issue." f143
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