6. The progress of the people, as distinct from that of their governments, may then be described as starting in the last great service done for Europe by the church—the organization of the Crusades. The feudal system separated men too much for healthy progress, and this singular display of religious zeal united the various nationalities in a common effort, and stirred up powers that had long slumbered. It was in this period that the adventurous and comprehensive activities of modern life commenced. Wealth had been largely confined to the feudal nobility. It now began to flow out through the general community. The nobles expended vast sums in fitting out princely retinues to lead to the Holy Land, for which their estates were security. They died, or returned penniless, and their lands passed into the hands of the commercial classes, whose successful diligence had made them wealthy. It was the first heavy blow to feudal institutions, and laid the foundation of the power of the people. Corporations and cities which had obtained the rights of feudal proprietors, employed them for the purposes of self-government, and so used an instrument of despotism to shield and sustain a virtual democracy. With this freedom of action, popular liberty, controlled in a general way by feudal obligations to the prince, king, or emperor, grew fast and strong protected by the growing despotisms of the church and the state. The Hanseatic League, in the north of Germany, was, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, perhaps as wealthy and powerful as any king or emperor in Christendom; and in the sixteenth, the small commercial province of the Netherlands could defy the whole power of Spain, with the wealth of the Indies at her back. 7. The revival of learning, and the invention of the art of printing, gave an immense impulse to this uprising of the people, commenced near three hundred years before; about the same time the Portuguese discovered the way to India by the Cape of Good Hope, Columbus threw open the “Gates of the West,” and the wealth of both Indies flowed in a full stream through the channels of commerce and trade; that is to say, into the hands of the busy and industrious people. All events seemed to conspire to build up a base for the power and development of the commonalty.