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 centuries, could be heard a voice like Thomas More's protesting against it.

Morton was sure that, sooner or later, America would be parceled out among kings' favorites, just as Europe had been, and with like wretched results. He determined to prevent such results so far as was in his power. He could see no way to do it effectually while allowing private ownership of land. To limit the amount of land one man might own presented insuperable difficulties. How could a just limit be fixed? Twenty acres of agricultural land miodit be no more than one man and his family needed; but twenty acres in a city, or on which a city might grow up, would so enrich a man and make him master of his fellows that he could oppress and corrupt them by thousands. A thousand acres of mountain land, fit only for grazing, might be none too much for a family; but a thousand acres of good agricultural land would make a man a landlord with a horde of slavish tenants. So Morton's constitution provided that, in the Commonwealth, there should be no private ownership of land, including waters, forests, and mines, except the title he had acquired from the Virginia Company and the title he