So long as catholicism had been the sole legal doctrine in Europe, these murmuring revolts of mind had not overset empires.

They had been punished by the hands of rulers.
Dungeons, punishments, inquisitions, fire, and faggot, had intimidated reason, and preserved erect the two-fold dogma on which the two governments reposed.
But printing, that unceasing outpouring of the human mind, was to the people a second revelation.

Employed at first exclusively for the Church, for the propagation of ruling ideas, it had begun to sap them.
The dogmata of temporal power, and spiritual power, incessantly assailed by these floods of light, could not be long without being shaken, first in the human mind and afterwards in things, to the very foundations.
_Guttemberg_; without knowing it, was the mechanist of the New World.

In creating the communication of ideas, he had assured the independence of reason.

Every letter of this alphabet which left his fingers, contained in it, more power than the armies of kings, and the thunders of pontiffs.