‘The principal objects of the Quebec Bill,’ we read in the _Annual Register_ for 1774,[47] ‘were to ascertain the limits of that province, which were extended far beyond what had been settled as such by the King’s Proclamation of 1763. To form a legislative council for all the affairs of that province, except taxation, which council should be appointed by the Crown, the office to be held during pleasure; and His Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects were entitled to a place in it. To establish the French laws, and a trial without jury, in civil cases: and the English laws, with a trial by jury, in criminal; to secure to the Roman Catholic clergy, except the Regulars, the legal enjoyment of their estates, and of their tythes from all who were of their own religion. These were the chief objects of the Act.’ [Sidenote: Extension of the boundaries of the province of Quebec.] It has been seen that, under the Proclamation of 1763, the province of Quebec included the settled part of Canada, as far as the point where the 45th parallel of latitude intersected the St. Lawrence, midway between Montreal and Lake Ontario. Outside the province were the Labrador coast from the river St. John to Hudson Straits, which, with the island of Anticosti and other small islands in the estuary of the St. Lawrence, was placed ‘under the care and inspection’ of the Governor of Newfoundland; the government of Nova Scotia, including at the time Cape Breton Island, the territory now forming the province of New Brunswick, and the island of St. John, afterwards Prince Edward Island; the territories of the Hudson’s Bay Company; and the great undefined region of the lakes and the Ohio as far as the Mississippi. The Quebec Act restored to Canada or, as it was still styled, the province of Quebec, the Labrador coast and Anticosti, and included in it, within the lines which the Act prescribed, the Western territories for which England and France had fought so hard. [Sidenote: The Labrador coast added to the province of Quebec.]