In the debate in the House of Commons a petition was presented from the Penns, claiming that part of the province of Pennsylvania was situated to the north-west of the Ohio, and Lord North offered no opposition to the petition, on the ground that the Bill was not intended to affect existing rights. On a map of 1776, after the passing of the Act, Pennsylvania was shown as jutting out at an acute angle into Lake Erie, and the boundary line, identical with the western frontier of the state, started from the lake near Presque Isle, and struck the Ohio at Logs Town, west of Fort Duquesne and slightly east of Beaver Creek, leaving to Pennsylvania the whole course of the Alleghany, and Fort Duquesne or Pittsburg. It will be noted that, further east, the line, being drawn along the St. Lawrence and the lakes, excluded from Canada the whole country of the Six Nations, which had been demarcated as Indian Territory by the Agreement of 1768.[53] The net result was to leave the boundary line south of the St. Lawrence, where it had been drawn in 1763, as far as the intersection of the 45th parallel with the river, and thence to follow the waterways up to the point in the southern shore of Lake Erie where the old French route to the Ohio left the lake. From the Atlantic up to this point the present international line between Canada and the United States is not far different at the present day, though more favourable to the United States, especially where, since the Ashburton Treaty of 1842, the state of Maine runs northward into the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick. But, by carrying the boundary from Lake Erie to the Ohio and down the Ohio to the Mississippi, all the Illinois country and all the western lands, for which English and French had contended, were confirmed to Canada. [Sidenote: Reasons for the extension of the province.] There were good reasons for taking this step. Eleven years had passed since the territories in question had been left as an Indian reserve. Events move quickly in a border land, and encroachments grow apace. The time had come for some defined system, some recognized law and government. As far as there were permanent settlers in these regions, they were, it would seem, although the contrary was averred in the House of Commons, French rather than English; and it would be more palatable for colonists of French origin to be incorporated with Canada than to be absorbed by the purely English colonies. The native population would unquestionably be better cared for under the government of Quebec than under the legislatures of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The waterways still, as in old times, made communication easier from Canada than from the southern colonies; and to those colonies, on the brink of war against the mother country, the mother country could hardly be expected to entrust the keeping of the West. [Sidenote: Arguments urged against it.]