The omissions from the Act are as noteworthy as its contents. The Bill, both as presented to Parliament and as finally passed into law, contained no description of the line of division between Upper and Lower Canada, or of the boundaries of the two provinces. In the draft which Grenville sent out in 1789 there was a blank space, in which Dorchester was invited, with the help of his surveyor-general, to insert a description of the boundaries; but, wrote Grenville in his covering dispatch, ‘there will be a considerable difficulty in the mode of describing the boundary between the district of Upper Canada and the territories of the United States, as the adhering to the line mentioned in the treaty with America would exclude the posts which are still in His Majesty’s possession and which the infraction of the treaty on the part of America has induced His Majesty to retain, while, on the other hand, the including them by express words within the limits to be established for the province by an Act of the British Parliament would probably excite a considerable degree of resentment among the inhabitants of the United States.’ Grenville accordingly suggested that the Upper Province might be described by some general terms such as ‘All the territories, &c., possessed by and subject to His Majesty and being to the West or South of the boundary line of Lower Canada, except such as are included within the present boundaries of the government of New Brunswick’. Uncertainty as to what was or was not British territory affected among other matters the administration of justice. It was from this point of view that Dorchester mainly regarded it when he wrote in reply to Grenville, ‘the attainment of a free course of justice throughout every part of His Majesty’s possessions in the way least likely to give umbrage to the United States appears to me very desirable’. He returned the draft of the Bill with the blank filled in with a precise description of the dividing line within what was beyond dispute Canadian territory, and with the addition of some general words including in the Canadas all lands to the southward ‘now subject to or possessed by His Majesty’, but he reported at the same time that the Chief Justice was not satisfied that the terms used would answer the purpose. Eventually the Government left out the whole clause, omitting also all reference to another difficult point which had been raised and which had affected the administration of justice in connexion with the fisheries in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, viz., the boundary line between Lower Canada and New Brunswick. Parliamentary debate on a very awkward question was thus avoided, and the Act contained no provision which could give offence to the United States. [Sidenote: How the boundaries were defined.]