Jefferson’s Monticello

“Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as they were of all which had gone before them. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself… and it is for the peace and good of mankind, that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years, should be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure.”

July 12, 1816

From the letter of Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, regarding possible reforms to the Virginia Constitution