| Fl. rhen. | Kr. rhen. | ||
| 30 | 49 | For taking the oaths at the Consistorium. | |
| 4 | 0 | To the Syndic for the Presentation. | |
| 2 | 0 | To the then Bürgermeister. | |
| 45 | 7½ | For the Government-sanction. | |
| Total | 81 fl. | 56½ kr. |
If the printing-charges of a Rector do stand a little higher in some points, yet, on the other hand, a Tertius, Quartus &c. come cheaper from the press than even a Conrector. Now it is clear that in this case a schoolmaster can subsist; since, in the course of the very first year, he gets an overplus beyond this dock-money of his office. A schoolmaster must, like his scholars, have been advanced from class to class, before these his loans to Government, together with the interest for delay of payment, can jointly amount to so much as his yearly income in the highest class. Another thing in his favour is, that our institutions do not—as those of Athens did—prohibit people from entering on office while in debt; but every man, with his debt-knapsack on his shoulders, mounts up, step after step, without obstruction. The Pope, in large benefices, appropriates the income of the first year under the title of Annates, or First Fruits; and accordingly he, in all cases, bestows any large benefice on the possessor of a smaller one, thereby to augment both his own revenues and those of others; but it shows, in my opinion, a bright distinction between Popery and Lutheranism, that the Consistoriums of the latter abstract from their school-ministers and church-ministers not perhaps above two-thirds of their first yearly income; though they too, like the Pope, must naturally have an eye to vacancies.
It may be that I shall here come in collision with the Elector of Mentz, when I confess, that in Schmausen's Corp. Jur. Pub. Germ. I have turned up the Mentz-Imperial-Court-Chancery-tax-ordinance of the 6th January 1659; and there investigated how much this same Imperial-Court-Chancery demands, as contrasted with a Consistorium. For example, any man that wishes to be baked or sodden into a Poet Laureate, has 50 florins tax-dues, and 20 florins Chancery-dues to pay down; whereas, for 20 florins more, he might have been made a Conrector, who is a poet of this species, as it were by the by and ex officio.—The institution of a Gymnasium is permitted for 1000 florins; an extraordinary sum, with which the whole body of the teachers in the instituted Gymnasium might with us clear off the entrymoneys of their schoolrooms. Again, a Freiherr, who, at any rate, often enough grows old without knowing how, must purchase the venia ætatis with 200 hard florins; while with the half sum he might have become a schoolmaster, and here age would have come of its own accord.—And a thousand such things!—They prove, however, that matters can be at no bad pass in our Governments and Circles, where promotions are sold dearer to Folly than to Diligence, and where it costs more to institute a school than to serve in one.
The remarks I made on this subject to a Prince, as well as the remarks a Town-Syndic made on it to myself, are too remarkable to be omitted for mere dread of digressiveness.
The Syndic—a man of enlarged views, and of fiery patriotism, the warmth of which was the more beneficent that he collected all the beams of it into one focus, and directed them to himself and his family—gave me (I had perhaps been comparing the School-bench and the School-stair to the bench and the ladder, on which people are laid when about to be tortured) the best reply: "If a schoolmaster consume nothing but 30 reichsthalers;[49] if he annually purchase manufactured goods, according as Political Economists have calculated for each individual, namely, to the amount of 5 reichsthalers; and no more hundredweights of victual than these assume, namely 10; in short, if he live like a substantial wood-cutter,—then the Devil must be in it, if he cannot yearly lay by so much net profit, as shall, in the long-run, pay the interest of his entry-debts."
[49] So much, according to Political Economists, a man yearly requires in Germany.
The Syndic must have failed to convince me at the time, since I afterwards told the Flachsenfingen Prince:[50] "Illustrious Sir, you know not, but I do—not a player in your Theatre would act the Schoolmaster in Engel's Prodigal Son, three nights running, for such a sum as every real Schoolmaster has to take for acting it all the days of the year.—In Prussia, Invalids are made Schoolmasters; with us, Schoolmasters are made Invalids."...
[50] This singular tone of my address to a Prince can only be excused by the equally singular relation, wherein the Biographer stands to the Flachsenfingen Sovereign, and which I would willingly unfold here, were it not that, in my Book, which, under the title of Dog-post-days, I mean to give to the world at Easter-fair 1795, I hoped to expound the matter to universal satisfaction.
But to our story! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his Crown-debts; but with quite a different purpose than the reader will guess, who has still the Schadeck testament in his head. In one word, he wanted to be Parson of Hukelum. To be a clergyman, and in the place where his cradle stood, and all the little gardens of his childhood, his mother also, and the grove of betrothment,—this was an open gate into a New Jerusalem, supposing even that the living had been nothing but a meagre penitentiary. The main point was, he might marry, if he were appointed. For, in the capacity of lank Conrector, supported only by the strengthening-girth of his waistcoat, and with emoluments whereby scarcely the purchase-money of a—purse was to be come at; in this way he was more like collecting wick and tallow for his burial-torch than for his bridal one.