The Challenge of the Commons: Beyond Trespass and Necessity

Colonists settled three towns on the Connecticut River early in 1637.1 Owing to the “condition of these several plantations in these beginnings,” necessity constrained them “to improve much grounds belonging to the several towns in a common way.”2 Common cultivation alleviated necessity; common lands served as platform for common cause. On January 14, 1638, the freemen of those towns, hoping to constitute “an orderly and decent Government,” voted to “associate and conjoin our selves to be as one Public State or Commonwealth . . . [and] enter into Combination and Confederation together . . . .”3 In this setting, “Commonwealth” was at the same time a metaphor of state, a principle of economic organization, and a description of everyday life. In its constituting moment of self-governance, the Connecticut assembly looks the picture of an early modern Enlightenment project par excellence, an actual rather than metaphorical Rousseauian social contract, and taking the venture a step further, a commonwealth literally grounded in the commons. This vision of origination persists in shaping American self-image; the New England town green and town hall meeting occupy iconic status, informing areas of contemporary public life from the placement of parks to the conduct of democratic discourse and electoral deliberation. However, the record of these same residents provides another founding picture of the commons. Eight months earlier, on May 1,