In class this week, when we looked at the primary source documents from when the Puritans made their journey from England to America to build the new Church of England. The last document was an outline of some of the rules that would be put in place once the Puritans settled in America. One of the rules had to do with the portion of land and property that each family got. They were each to have a "convenient" portion of land.
I thought that it meant that everyone would have roughly the same amount of land. However, upon further discussion in class, I was wrong. Not everybody got an equal amount of land, because there was a certain group of people who divided up the land.
This made me think about what the government's role should be in America when it comes to owning property. Is it possible for everyone to own land? Should the government play any role in giving land out to people? Why or why not?
This is a very interesting idea Aj. It does seem like it was a much simpler time when everyone could get a "convenient" amount of land distributed by a certain class of people. Although I think this would cause a lot of chaos in today's society just because of how ambiguous the word "convenient" it. Everyone obviously would want more land, and could most likely create an argument as to why they deserve it. Also, if the government stepped in and made sure every individual had their own property, it would be very similar to communism. This would upset an extremely large class of people, and therefore I believe the government should not have any role in giving land to people.
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