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 cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. what part of the plot does this excerpt reveal?

This is part of the exposition; understanding that they have created a new society but that even in a place where they believed that life would be perfect and a sort of Utopia, they knew that they would eventually need prisons and cemeteries because inevitably people will die and start to revolt. 

Basically just use the past tense of each word and you should be absolutely fine