In 1819 another very important step was taken; viz.: the Florida Treaty with Spain. By this, Spain retired to the line of 42 degrees, ceding to the American Republic all her rights above that line. With her own claims joined to those of Spain, the Republic would seem to be able to snap her fingers at England. But, with characteristic tenacity, the latter power made ready to insist all the more strenuously upon her claims. In 1825 England and the United States agreed with Russia upon the line of 54 degrees 40 minutes, as the southern line of Russian claims. With Spain and Russia out of it, Oregon was left for England and the United States to fight over. The Joint Occupation Treaty was to last ten years, with the privilege of renewal. Meanwhile what were the factors in the struggle for possession? There was on the side of England the Briarean monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company, supported by a disciplined and intelligent government. But the English people were not in it. On the American side the Government was strangely indifferent. There were several ambitious attempts to control the situation by American trading and fur companies. But the essential forces were the American immigrant, the American missionary, the Declaration of Independence, and the ox-team. Those were the champions of America. They were the Davids against the Goliaths of British monopoly. At first thought it seemed that Goliath would have a "walk-over." The case seemed hopeless for the Americans. But to the deeper observer, American triumph was inevitable. It was the Age of Democracy. The conception both of popular government and of individual ownership of land, with which went the corollary of "equal opportunities for all men and special privileges for none," was graven deep upon American character. With these things there went, of necessity, the disapproval of slavery and the support of free labour. Still further there went, by the same logic, the doctrine of unity and continental expansion. These various influences have constituted the broad foundation on which were reared the towers and battlements of American nationality. In previous chapters we have outlined the operations of the Hudson's Bay Company, the coming of the missionaries, and the immigrations of Americans. The policy of the Hudson's Bay Company was to keep the country a wilderness, to maintain amicable relations with the Indians, and to depend mainly on the fur-trade for the great profits of their enterprise. The policy of the American immigrants was to build homes, cities, roads, steamboats, mills, develop the country, crowd out the natives, and depend on mining, farming, stock-raising, lumbering, for their profits; not profits of a monopoly located in a distant money centre, but profits of the individual worker on his own land. The difference was world-wide. It represented two different conceptions of government and of life itself.