Chapter 22

"You have said they are men;
As such their hearts are something."

Byron.

The colony had now reached a point when it became necessary to proceed
with method and caution. Certain great principles were to be
established, on which the governor had long reflected, and he was fully
prepared to set them up, and to defend them, though he knew that ideas
prevailed among a few of his people, which might dispose them to cavil
at his notions, if not absolutely to oppose him. Men are fond of change;
half the time, for a reason no better than that it is change; and, not
unfrequently, they permit this wayward feeling to unsettle interests
that are of the last importance to them, and which find no small part of
their virtue in their permanency.

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 should be but one government in his land, and that
this government should be of a character to encourage and not to depress
exertion. So long as a man toiled for himself and those nearest and
dearest to him, society had a security for his doing much, that would be
wanting where the proceeds of the entire community were to be shared in
common; and, on the knowledge of this simple and obvious truth did our
young legislator found his theory of government. Protect all in their
rights equally, but, that done, let every man pursue his road to
happiness in his own way; conceding no more of his natural rights than
were necessary to the great ends of peace, security, and law. Such was
Mark's theory. As for the modern crotchet that men yielded _no_ natural
right to government, but were to receive all and return nothing, the
governor, in plain language, was not fool enough to believe it. He was
perfectly aware that when a man gives authority to society to compel him
to attend court as a witness, for instance, he yields just so much of
his natural rights to society, as might be necessary to empower him to
stay away, if he saw fit; and, so on, through the whole of the very long
catalogue of the