Note 193 — Chapter IV · LANDED POSSESSION. THE EÐEL, HÍD OR ALOD.
Reading edition
If he had a market for his surplus, he might accumulate wealth. Even if he had not this, he insured a comfortable, though rude subsistence, for his household. The spur to exertion, urging him to acquire luxuries, might be wanting, and the national advancement in refinement thus retarded: but he had a sufficiency of the necessaries of life, and an independent existence in the body of the family and the Mark. Such a state necessarily precedes the more cultivated stages of society.