Here's a nice passage from Edmund Burke, on the idea of society as a contract across generations, though he doesn't do enough I think to distinguish society from the state.  I found the passage from the e-TOC of a weird journal I get, Population and Development Review, it's about demographics, I recognize that's not everybody's cup of tea but everybody should pay some attention to it.

As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primæval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles.

Contrast this to Jefferson's idea that "the earth belongs to the living," and you get a sense of the greater wisdom of Burke's idea.  At least I think so.