Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1847-10-23

bghy builder OF lmmutable principles and eternal
lws for mankind, TO pull down, feudal, exotic
I'D barbarous particular limitation the owner
sip of property and afterwards to come forward
wh all the confidence of infalibity, and inform us
Tilt there can be no property whatever, except
upn just that imprescnptibe condition which he
| hhself caused to be exploded
But The entire property of nation is, it seems,
a1estate held upon usuruct; that is, with no right
bS to the fruits, the yield, during the lifetime OF
It'd possessor. Now, such limitation against the
pSsessor inevitably implies four things
First. That there must originally have existed
sSnewhere real, perfect title, thus to impose a
Imitation upon the enjoyment of all nations
rpvabes and immovables, real estate and personal
tis; for usuructs are only created by some one
who had perfect title.
secondly. That either the full right, the title,
MEANWHILE remains in somebody else present or
future or that il does not.
Third. That in the former of these two latter
caSs the property Is alienable, first to the gene
raj title, and second as to the enjoyment, when the
us,iruct falls in, expires.
burthiy. That if the usayr,tct is perpetuity
without an adverse title any where to check il, il
becimes perfect title itself, just mere posses
siondoes.
HIT, again: an usufruct is itself alienable; man
can dispose of his interest in thing, whether par
tia D. exclusive and limited estate, life-interest
is juA mush taxable as any other.
VIZ have thus shown not only that Mr.. JEFrER-
SON assumption that all property is an asyruct is
unrle, but that, if it were true, the consequences
which he would establish from that fact are totally
absurd.
There is yet, however, further fallacy, the
blindest, to be exposed in his assumptions he
could not surely have forgotten this great point
that, if generation inherits, it also creates; and
that at least all the property which its own jndiv-
dual labor brings into being during its eighteen and
wo-third years of existence must be absolutely its
own. Add TO this its income from what 1t holds
las he grants upon usufruct, and which also must
be absolutely its own, and you have certainly a
great body of property in nation Of which 1t can
dispose even upon his argument, precisely as
likes it.
But, finally, how easy it was to sse that if the
law of usutructs applied in this MATER at all, il ap
Piled precisely in the opposite way! For, as It is
mere stuff TO set up, Of sudden, this Jetiersonlan
discovery that, because man may ieaUe heirs, he
has no right 10 make cbntract, and IS thus, in
the eye of law, perpetual infant; as, there
fore, when out of debt pe may borrow money on
mortgage as much as be likes, and incumber his
estate, either to improvti perhaps to defend his
title, to his country or TO print gratltous
Bibles, or to pay for fnfdel tracts, to fee opera
dancers or to 90 AID live in Paris or, if it suits
him, merely to snake ducks and brakes of his
money! in orderto spite her-at-law whom he
does not love and as, in all these cases, at his
DEATH the heir aforesaid must take in spite of all his
heirship, only as much estate will be left after
his devisor's debts donations lquidated; and
as, in word, it was perfectly in the Idevisor's
power to tie up his goods in trust or with remain
der, and leave him. the heir natural, nothing bm a
Aye-estafe. the usyruct of his lands, ttnements,
bank-stock, &C., we do see how man may put his
Posterity in the predicament of an usyrxct; but
cannot, for our life, perhaps because Veare no
Abstractonists,) conceive how mans poserity can
infict an usufruct upon him. Perhaps, however,
some great heir of these doctrines will degn an
explanations or possibly one of the resurrectonsts
of Monticello MSS. can help us, who are rpt law
yers, to little legal illumination.