"the founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetry, and another portion as the site of a prison"
The purpose with which the colony was founded was completed faded by reality when the colony started settling, and what they actually needed was not anymore a happy place, but a cemetry and a prison. So H. might indicate that the original thoughts of the Riform were actually not unfair, but they degenerated with the time because of people's perversion (avidity etc). Yet, the prison and the cemetry one next to the other, could symbolize the world viewed as a prison, and the only way to get out of it was death.
Mapi - "faded with reality"? The reality of all societies are that people die and people misbehave. Building the prison and cemetery could be seen as practical. Perhaps Hawthorne is commenting that society shouldn't need these two things, or that they are not natural components of nature (or perhaps mankind in the wild) I do agree that Hawthorne views the society as a prison and the the cemetery as escape.
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