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Watercolor on ivory. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Madison at age 32.
Watercolor on ivory. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Madison at age 32.
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 nor rights over it.
This, with its echo of the Declaration (self-evident
) was Jefferson at his most terse. Except for the phrase in usufruct
— a legalism meaning the right to use property for a certain time — Jefferson’s words could be chiseled in stone, or shouted on the hustings.