He wished he had a suitable "volunteer" to listen to Schulte right now.
Herr Schulte was in a feud. Not a formally declared feud, as had existed among the imperial knights long ago in the past, but a normal one, stemming from a brawl over property rights. The recently deceased duke of Saxe-Coburg had, some twenty years before, leased property that crossed the boundary line between Coburg and Franconia to a family of Protestant exiles who came from Austria by way of Bayreuth. The duke had done this because the son of the prior leaseholder, Schulte's father, had abandoned the property, having found a more advantageous situation further south, in the Steigerwald part of Franconia.
So it had remained. But in the awful winter of 1631-1632, Schulte and his family had been pushed out of the Steigerwald when the army of Gustavus Adolphus passed through. Like so many other farmers, he had been dislocated by the Thirty Years War. He was a refugee. So he had returned to his grandfather's old village and was now suing the current leaseholder for return of his family's "traditional" holding.
Of course, one way to explain his actions would be to attribute them to avarice. The Bible itself said that the love of money was the root of all evil.
But at least he had learned to distinguish between avarice and political power. Thomas Paine pointed out that,
MANKIND being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance: the distinctions of rich and poor may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but seldom or never the MEANS of riches; and tho' avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.
Constantin Ableidinger now knew more about lease grants than anyone except a territorial ruler or a lawyer ought to know. It was certainly more than he had ever wanted to know about them.
Traditional.
Schulte was, of course, appealing to the Franconian administration run by the uptimers from Grantville—or, more accurately, managed as far as principle went by the uptimers from Grantville and run on their behalf by a gaggle of German bureaucrats—for redress of his wrongs. Ultimately, if they did not settle it to his satisfaction, he would undoubtedly be appealing to the supreme court of the CPE, the Swede having occupied the city where the supreme court of the Holy Roman Empire held its sessions and annexed its personnel. If that court did not satisfy him, he would, if he survived so long, appeal ultimately to Gustavus Adolphus in person as the symbolic "good ruler."
What was the Swede likely to know about it?
Nothing, of course. Der gesunde Menschenverstand. Schlichte Vernunft. Common sense. Thomas Paine, in the first American pamphlet Ableidinger had read, a year and a half ago now, had written:
There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of Monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king shuts him from the World, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly; wherefore the different parts, by unnaturally opposing and destroying each other, prove the whole character to be absurd and useless.
Paine was as refreshing as cold spring water on a hot summer day.
As Schulte talked, Ableidinger wondered idly if anyone in this famous Grantville had introduced the king of Sweden to Thomas Paine's views on hereditary succession.
To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity. For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.
If not, perhaps he should send him a copy of Common Sense. It's views on religious toleration were important.
As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith. Let a man throw aside that narrowness of soul, that selfishness of principle, which the niggards of all professions are so unwilling to part with, and he will be at once delivered of his fears on that head. Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society. For myself, I fully and conscientiously believe that it is the will of the Almighty that there should be a diversity of religious opinions among us. It affords a larger field for our Christian kindness; were we all of one way of thinking, our religious dispositions would want matter for probation; and on this liberal principle I look on the various denominations among us to be like children of the same family, differing only in what is called their Christian names.