p.

28

of Great Britain ; and the alarm which the writer felt, lest
the United States should be involved in a like calamity.
At any rate, it is the most extraordinary instance of false
premises and fallacious reasoning that ever entered the head
of an enthusiast.

What is a generation? A multitude of individuals, old and young, unconnected by any legal or political tie which
can constitute them a person in law, or a corporation, and
of course incapable of contracting debts or expending mo-
ney, as a body ; in short, incapable of doing any act as a body. A generation can neither make a law nor repeal it.

And what sort of social right is that which an indi-
vidual has to purchase or sell lands and contract debts, when
the mere fact of the death of the majority of the society, an
event over which he can have no control, dissolves the con-
tract, and expunges the debt? And how is the fact, at any
time, to be ascertained, that a majority are dead? A man who
can seriously reason in this manner is worthy of a strait
jacket.

But the case of a state or its legislature stands on dif-
ferent principles. A state is a perpetual corporation ; all
the members of it are united by consent or compact in one
body, constituting a person in law, capable of enacting
laws, and repealing them, and of contracting and paying
debts. This corporation never dies ; and the powers it had
the last year, or twenty or a hundred years ago, are the
same powers which it possesses this year. The act of the
state, fifty years ago, is the act of the state this year ; and a
contract made fifty years ago, binding the state then, con-
tinues to bind the same state now. A change of the mem-