"But these beneficial establishments were accidentally connected with a pernicious and intolerable abuse. Two or three hundred agents or messengers were employed, under the jurisdiction of the master of the offices, to announce the names of the annual consuls and the edicts or victories of the emperors. They insensibly assumed the license of reporting whatever they could observe of the conduct either of the magistrates or private citizens, and were soon considered as the eyes of the monarch and the scourge of the people. Under the warm influence of a feeble reign they multiplied to the incredible number of ten thousand, disdained the mild though frequent admonitions of the laws, and exercised in the profitable management of the posts a rapacious and insolent oppression. These official spies, who regularly corresponded with the palace, were encouraged by favor and reward anxiously to watch the progress of every treasonable design, from the faint and latent symptoms of disaffection to the actual preparation of an open revolt. Their careless or criminal violation of truth was covered by the consecrated mask of zeal; and they might securely aim their poisoned arrows at the breast either of the guilty or the innocent, who had provoked their resentment." After the downfall of the Romans, commerce remained paralyzed during the period of Gothic ignorance and barbarism. The crusades for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Saracens, in the eleventh and following centuries, opened again communication between the east and the west by leading multitudes from every European country into Asia; and though the object of these expeditions was conquest, and not commerce, their commercial effects were both beneficial and permanent. The crusades were especially favorable to the commercial pursuits of the Italian states. The vast armies which marched from all parts of Europe toward Asia gave encouragement to the shipping of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, which sometimes transported them, and always supplied them with provisions and military stores. Besides the immense sums which these states received on this account, they obtained commercial privileges of great consequence in the settlements which the crusaders made in the East. All the commodities which they imported or exported were exempted from every imposition, the property of entire suburbs in some of the maritime towns, and of large streets in others, was vested in them, and all questions arising among persons residing within their precincts, or who traded under their protection, were decided by their own laws and by judges of their own appointment. When the crusaders took Constantinople, the Venetians did not neglect to secure to themselves many advantages from that event. Nearly all the branches of commerce were in time transferred from Constantinople to their city. At the end of the crusade period Venice had monopolized nearly all the foreign trade of Europe.