Hitherto, with such slight exceptions as existed in deference to the
station, not to say rights of the governor, everything of an
agricultural character had been possessed in common among the colonists.
But this was a state of things which the good sense of Mark told him
could not, and ought not to last. The theories which have come into
fashion in our own times, concerning the virtues of association, were
then little known and less credited. Society, as it exists in a legal
form, is association enough for all useful purposes, and sometimes too
much; and the governor saw no use in forming a wheel within a wheel. If
men have occasion for each other's assistance to effect a particular
object, let them unite, in welcome, for that purpose; but Mark was fully
determined that there sh
