[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 367 
of considerable length. He points out that the Misseguash line is 
not only the most natural and therefore the best between two large 
provinces, but also that ‘having been fixed and acquiesced in for 
nearly twenty years, and settlements made in confidence of its per- 
manency, any change would tend “to destroy that just confidence in 
the stability of the measures of His Majesty’s government that his 
loyal subjects here have been wont to entertain.” He then argues 
against each of the lines, pointing out the immense difficulties that 
would now attend the adoption of any of them. In the case of the 
proposed Aulac boundary he points out that the old Township of 
Cumberland included four divisions, two of which are wholly in New 
Brunswick, and one in Nova Scotia, while only the fourth is inter- 
sected by the line, and that if there were serious inconvenience (of 
which, however, he has been able to obtain no evidence) thereby 
caused to owners of lots in this division, the boundary line could be 
altered to run between the divisions, but this he thinks, entirely un- 
necessary. In reading his letter one cannot but be struck both by the 
conclusiveness of Governor Carleton’s arguments against all of the 
proposed lines, and also by the diplomatic skill manifested in the 
mode of his presentation of them. Apparently also his letter was 
viewed as conclusive by the authorities in England, for with it the 
whole controversy appears to have ended, and the Misseguash boundary 
was thenceforth accepted, so far as I can find, without question by 
Nova Scotia. 
In reviewing the controversy thus closed, it is evident that the 
prime movers in the agitation were not the inhabitants of the district 
involved, but the authorities at Halifax. As to their motives it is to 
be said that while, no doubt, they were actuated first of all by the 
primal and universal instinct for self-aggrandizement, they had in 
addition some grounds for their view that the settlements at the head 
of the Bay of Fundy should have belonged to them. These settle- 
ments, notably those from Sackville to Amherst, were formed between 
1761 and 1765 by New Englanders (with later additions from York- 
shire, England), large numbers of whom settled in those years in the 
present province of Nova Scotia, while but few settled elsewhere in 
the present New Brunswick. Of the Loyalists who came in 1783, 
only a few went to these New England settlements at the head of the 
Bay, but they settled on the St. John and made there a Loyalist 
province. In Nova Scotia, however, fewer Loyalists settled, and the 
New Englanders had a proportionally greater share in the govern- 
ment. It was natural, therefore, that the government of Nova Scotia 
should view these settlements as belonging rather to old Nova Scotia 
