[Laaxonc] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 429 
(2) THE PARISH BOUNDARIES. 
The Act of 1786, which confirmed the county boundaries, also 
divided those counties into towns or parishes.! The original parishes 
were thirty-four in number, distributed as shown on the accompanying 
map No. 35. Since 1786 one hundred and ten have been added, mak- 
ing at present (1901) one hundred and forty-four, distributed as shown 
on the frontispiece map. As in the case of the counties, the parish 
boundaries are to be traced through the statutes of the province from 
1786 to the present, and like them, they are codified, and as well ex- 
tensively altered by the Acts of 1854 and 1896. 
In general the same broad principles determining the distribution 
of the counties have controlled also that of the parishes, with the 
difference that actual settlement has had in proportion to topography 
a somewhat larger influence in fixing the limits of the parishes 
than of the counties. The effort has been to make a parish include a 
settlement, or natural group of settlements, and hence the lines have 
been made to run on the least settled ground and to interfere as little 
as possible with existent land grants. The latter end has been most 
easily and successfully attained by the simple device of using land grant 
lines as the parish boundaries, and the great majority of our parish 
boundaries are thus formed in whole or in part. Since the grant lines 
are determined more or less by topography (as at right angles to the 
rivers, etc.), so indirectly in this way are the parish lines affected by 
topography. This has moreover the additional advantage that the 
parish lines are thus already run and marked out, at least in their 
more important parts in lands already settled, though such lines are 
often extended by law far into wilderness lands, (in order to include 
all of the province in parishes), in which case they are not run and 
marked. In fact, so far as I know, no parish lines have ever been 
specially run out and marked as such. From the first the parishes 
have always been laid out within certain counties, none of them lying 
in two counties except temporarily during changes in county lines, 
and hence county lines are also parish boundaries, although originally 

1 In actual practice the word parish only is used for these divisions in 
New Brunswick, town having in this sense only an official use, and being 
restricted in practice to the eight incorporated towns. It is the English custom 
to use parish and the American to use town, and the fact that New Brunswick 
uses parish while most of the other Canadian provinces use town or township 
is due no doubt, as Mr. George Johnson thas pointed out (Place-names of 
Canada, Ottawa, 1897) to the strong English sympathies of New Brunswick, 
resulting from the strong Loyalist element in her population. In many re- 
spects New Brunswick is the most English of the Canadian Provinces. 
