Mr. Stansfeld moved on Monday for a Committee to inquire
into the boundaries of parishes, unions, and counties, and made a strong enough case as to the confusion. There are civil parishes • (near 16,000 of them) and ecclesiastical parishes, and some parishes are subdivided and go into many counties, and some are so small that in one the population returned was an old woman, a pig, and a donkey. There are 782 parishes in which the popu- lation does not exceed 50. And there are 150 parishes which are in more than one county. Then there are townships with a great number of detached parts,—one with 19 detached parts, like broken-off bits of cellular tissue. Again, of 647 Unions, 177 overlap the boundaries of counties. Mr. Stansfeld wants the Committee to recommend some mode of simplification and consolidation, to glue together the detached bits of parishes, to see if every parish and every union could not be brought within the boundaries of a single administrative county, and so forth. Mr. Cross was very snappish in his criticism, thought the Government were preparing to touch the merest fringe of the subject, and deprecated any meddling with county boundaries. After the old woman, the pig, and the donkey, parochial idolatry was impossible ; but county idolatry was still possible, and the Conservative party must do their duty by themselves, as they have done by " the lond." The Committee was granted.
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