The settlement of the Oregon boundary question again showed American hatred of England to be chronic. The question finally resolved itself into whether the threat of 54.40 or fight should be carried out, (a threat to deprive Canada of access to the Pacific Ocean and the possession of most of the enormous wheat fields now being developed in the northwest) or to fight Mexico and extend its boundaries to the South instead of the north. This latter scheme suited the slaveholders best who were then in power. The United States government then entered into a war with Mexico, one of the most unjustifiable contests ever entered into by a civilized nation. By this war of conquest the United States nearly doubled its territory. It must be said to the credit of New England that she would not take any part in this war any more than she did in the war of 1812. When confederation of the Canadian provinces occurred in 1867, there was placed on record in the House of Representatives at Washington that it was disapproved and that the House regarded the Act of Confederation as a menace to the United States. For a hundred years after the Revolution it had been the policy of the United States to force Canada into annexation, and it was considered that she would be more likely to come into the Union if she was harrassed by a high tariff, boundary and fishing disputes, but now it is known to have been all wrong. The factors worked out just the reverse. Conditions have arrived that were little foreseen until within ten years. The American people have recognized the fact that a great change has taken place in Canada which materially effects the relation between Canada and the United States. Mr. Root, U. S. Secretary of State, recently said: "Canada is no longer the outlying northern country in which a fringe of descendants of royalists emigrating from the colonies when they became independent of Great Britain, lived and gained a precarious subsistence from a fertile soil. It has become the home of a great people increasing in population and wealth. The stirrings of a national sentiment are to be felt. In their relations to England one can see that while still loyal to their mother country, still a loyal part of the British Empire, they are growing up, and, as the boy is to his parents when he attains manhood, they are a personality of themselves. In their relations to us they have become a sister nation. With their enormous national wealth, with their vigor and energy following the pathway that we have followed, protecting their industries as we have protected ours, proud of their country as we are proud of ours, they are no longer the little remnants upon our borders; they are a great and powerful sister nation."