Both Mexico and Brazil started their independent careers with governors of the style of Emperor, but in Mexico he was very soon ousted and a republican government instituted. In all the Spanish States of South America, too, the form of government was republican; but there was an Emperor of Brazil, of the royal family of Portugal, though quite independent of the Portuguese Government, throughout most of the century, until she too elected to become republican. The Continent is for the greater part exceedingly {210} rich and fertile, and supplies to Europe a great deal of its surplus products of very many kinds. Were it not for the frequent revolutions and changes of government, which make property insecure and distract the people from productive work, all these States might be far more prosperous even than they are. Naturally enough they always have had many immigrants of the Latin race. Italians especially have been going out to the States of that Southern Continent in very large numbers. The United States have attracted the peoples of more Northern Europe, the Germans and Scandinavia. Of Canada the population has been swelled by English, Irish and, largely, by Scottish immigration. The French have not gone there in great numbers, but we must always remember that there is a considerable population, in certain parts of Canada, that is French in race and in speech--the descendants of the original French settlers. Even after they had acquired Louisiana, the people of the United States did not find themselves with an entirely unimpeded course to the West, for Mexico, independent since 1822, possessed all or most of that territory which you may now see marked on the map as Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California, all of which passed, by conquest or by arrangement, into the hands of the United States shortly before the middle of the century. The transfer of California was immediately followed by a violent rush of Eastern Americans to the West, where gold, in great quantities, had just been found. Thus, or somewhat thus, the general political boundaries of the United States and of the other countries of the two American Continents came to be as they are; but there was at least one moment when the Union of the States itself was in grievous danger of breaking up. [Sidenote: The slavery question]