Pastor Schaeffer was turning red and starting to sputter.
“For the sake of your health,” Ableidinger said, reaching over and taking the newspaper. “It’s a fable, like Aesop. That’s classical enough.” He started to read it out loud for everyone in the tavern. His booming voice, trained in rhetoric and debate, caught the attention of even the people who didn’t pay much attention to the politics of the village or the region. “The English title of the story was Bad, Ba-a-a-ad, Brillo!”
Everyone knew animal fables. Nobody had trouble figuring out that Brillo, whatever a Brillo might be, stood for the sturdy German farmer. Nor that the merino ram stood for the rulers who made their lives difficult.
Ableidinger was no more than half way through when Pastor Schaeffer got up and left the tavern.
None of the rest of the audience paid any attention to his disapproval. Frankenwinheim provided him with an unruly flock.
Kaethe pulled the shutter closed and brought in an oil lamp. “Read it again,” she ordered. “Maybe there’s something to be happy about, after all.”
Rudolph blinked up at her. “What?”
“The up-timers printed it, didn’t they? The plain old ordinary ram was clever enough to outwit the highly-bred one. This wasn’t smuggled in. Our new rulers-they printed a fable in which this Brillo triumphed.”
Ableidinger grinned. “Not edifying, of course. To be properly edifying, I’m sure Pastor Schaeffer would insist that Brillo should have come to a proper insight that God the Father had established the merino ram as the representative of His secular sword on earth and deferred to the gentleram, giving him proper precedence.”
“Teacher.” Old Kaethe rapped him on the top of the head. “That’s not respectful.”
Ableidinger nodded. “I know.” His voice rumbled as he started reading through the fable again.
* * *
He had to read Schade, Brillo! Schade! a half-dozen times. Not that the rest of the villagers couldn’t read, but they only had one copy of the story. In any case, most people would rather hear something read out loud, with feeling and emphasis in the reader’s voice. By the time they got out of the tavern, it was full dark. Old Kaethe had given them a crock of hot broth to dunk their bread. Matthias was sleeping on his cot. The comfort in his stomach had put him right to sleep.
The oil in the lamp wouldn’t last much longer.
Ableidinger hadn’t been that surprised by the fable. In other issues of the weekly newspaper for farmers, the up-timers had published paragraphs of political philosophy. Sayings. Maxims. He had copied out some of them, from John Locke, from Benjamin Franklin, from Thomas Jefferson.
But those authors were Englishmen, and they had written then, not now. If he understood properly what this Grantville city signified, they had written in a “then” that now would never happen. In a future that never would be.
The Bible provided comfort for all tribulations. “With God, all things are possible.”
Thus, a city from the future, too, was possible.
Not that Pastor Schaeffer would be likely to see it that way.
Ableidinger had been a little surprised by the fable. The other authors had written “then.” Not to mention “there.” Brillo was, most certainly, here and now. An ordinary German ram.
Ableidinger opened Common Sense. He would make the most of this evening’s ration of oil. He didn’t have much time for reading in the daylight in winter. That was when most of his pupils spent most of their days at school, so he had to teach the lessons.
That was his job. Teaching. Not thinking about political philosophy.
* * *
Then and now. There and here. Thomas Paine. “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” How local circumstances could give rise to universal principles. “The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; . . .”
Ableidinger frowned to himself. Looking up, he frowned at his pupils, directing the older ones back to doing simple addition on their slates.
Did the up-timers who would be administering Franconia agree with Paine?
If so, why were they working for the king of Sweden?
If not, why had they published this pamphlet in German?
He continued reading, fascinated by the distinction that Paine made between society and government, the first produced by men’s wants and promoting their happiness; the second produced by men’s wickedness and restraining their vices. Society was a blessing; government a necessary evil. “The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”
Hey, this was a good one! “ . . .the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”
For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
Ableidinger was very happy to discover that the new administration-or, at least, the men who had founded the country from which the new administrators came-had a clear and distinct picture in their minds of the way a village ought to work. Whether or not it did, of course, was another question.
Looking up at the children, he told them to stop working and listen while he read to them.
None of them objected.
He read through Paine’s description of a small number of persons, settling a new land and, in a condition of “natural liberty,” establishing a society by cooperating with one another.
“A thousand motives will excite them thereto . . .”
He assigned the older children the task of thinking of just ten of those motives for establishing a society in the wilderness. Each of them should talk with his or her parents and bring the list to school the next day. They would combine all the lists and then compare them to the reasons that Thomas Paine gave for this action.
They did combine the lists. Then he had each child copy Paine’s reasons and take them home to their parents.
The pastor, when he heard about this assignment, was not pleased. He said so to the mayor.
“Surely,” Old Kaethe asked, “you would not deny that God’s children should endeavor to assist one another? Charity is a virtue.”
“When you put it that way . . .” Schaeffer turned and went back to his house.
At the school, Ableidinger was still proceeding through Common Sense. Once Paine’s hypothetical emigrants had established a society, because they began to “relax in their duty and attachment to each other,” they reached a point at which “this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.”
Ah. How remarkable! A lot of what Paine wrote was specific to the circumstances of England and England’s handling of its colonies in America. That was specific to time and place. Ableidinger skipped over this in school. It wasn’t something the children really needed to learn, and he did have to find time for the regular lessons. England was far away and every educated man in the Germanies knew that the place was terribly backwards. Besides, if Thomas Paine had believed that the “English constitution” was complex, one could only assume that he had never made a study of the Holy Roman Empire.
Some things, though, were worth emphasizing. Paine even knew of the ancient custom of the villages in many parts of the Germanies according to which the council met under a tree.
Some convenient tree will afford them a State House, under the branches of which the whole Colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of Regulations and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In this first parliament every man by natural right will have a seat.
Paine didn’t seem to realize that it ought to be a linden tree. But then, there was a limit to what one could expect of foreigners. Perhaps there were no lindens in England or this far-away America.
As Ableidinger taught Paine to his students, he started sending out circular letters to the teachers in other villages in the vicinity urging them to obtain their own copies of the pamphlet and helpfully enclosing the lesson plans he was developing for teaching it.
The most complicated one dealt with the increase in size of the imaginary colony, which required that village-style government be supplemented by a system of elected representatives.
Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, ‘tis right.