Entails are founded upon the most absurd of all propositions, the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth and to all that it possesses.

— ADAM SMITH, Wealth of Nations, Book III., Chap. 2.

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 power nor rights over it.

— THOMAS JEFFERSON, Works (edited by Washington), Vol. III., p. 103 (1789)