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.
The "simple voice of nature and reason."
Der gesunde Menschenverstand. Common Sense.
Even in those sections specific to England, there were some good diagnoses of the general problems and occasional sentences from which general principles could be derived.
Ableidinger found Paine's analysis of scriptural principles to be not only excellent, but also quite in keeping with many of the assertions made at the time of the Peasant War in 1525—the one in which the farmers' hope for liberty had been so betrayed by the leaders of the new Reformation. He looked at the piece of paper on the table in front of him. Yes, Lutheran though he was himself, he would write it. In this matter, Luther had betrayed the Germans' hopes for greater liberty.