In the year 1774, Parliament intervened for the first time in Canadian affairs, and passed what was known as the "Quebec Act," which greatly extended the boundaries of the province of Quebec, as defined by the Proclamation of 1763. On one side the province now extended to the frontiers of New England, Pennsylvania, New York Province, the Ohio, and the left bank of the Mississippi; on the other to the Hudson's Bay Territory; Labrador, Anticosti, and the Magdalen Islands, annexed to Newfoundland by the Proclamation of 1763, were made part of the province of Quebec. The "Quebec Act" created much debate in the House of Commons. The Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords, described it as a "most cruel and odious measure." The opposition in the province was among the British inhabitants, who sent over a petition for its repeal or amendment, their principal grievance being that it substituted the laws and usages of Canada for English law. The "Act of 1774" was exceedingly unpopular in the English-speaking colonies, then at the commencement of the Revolution, on account of the extension of the limits of the province so as to include the country long known as the "Old North-west" in American history, and the consequent confinement of the Thirteen Colonies between the Atlantic coast and the Alleghany Mountains, beyond which the hardy and bold frontiersmen of Virginia and Pennsylvania were already passing into the great valley of the Ohio. Parliament, however, appears to have been influenced by a desire to adjust the government of the province so as to conciliate the majority of the Canadian people at the critical time.