All accounts of the Overseers are to be annually examined by
    the Court of Common Pleas for Barnstable, and a copy sent by
    the Overseers to the Governor.

    Any action commenced by the Overseers, does not abate by their
    death, but may be prosecuted by the survivors.

All fines, &c. under the act, are to be recovered before Courts in Barnstable County, one half to the informer, and the other to the State.  These are all the provisions of the law of 1819, and these are the provisions under which the tribe is governed.

As I suppose my reader can understand these laws, and is capable of judging of their propriety, I shall say but little on this subject, I will ask him how, if he values his own liberty, he would or could rest quiet under such laws.  I ask the inhabitants of New England generally, how their fathers bore laws, much less oppressive, when imposed upon them by a foreign government.  It will be at once seen that the third section takes from us the rights and privileges of citizens in toto, and that we are not allowed to govern our own property, wives and children.  A board of overseers are placed over us to keep our accounts, and give debt and credit, as may seem good unto them.

At one time, it was the practice of the Overseers, when the Indians hired themselves to their neighbors, to receive their wages, and dispose of them at their own discretion.  Sometimes an Indian bound on a whaling voyage would earn four or five hundred dollars, and the shipmaster would account to the overseers for the whole sum.  The Indian would get some small part of his due, in order to encourage him to go again, and gain more for his white masters, to support themselves and educate their children with.  And this is but a specimen of the systematic course taken to degrade the tribe from generation to generation.  I could tell of one of our masters who has not only supported himself and family out of the proceeds of our lands and labors, but has educated a son at College, at our expense.

It is true that if any Indian elected to leave the plantation, he might settle and accumulate property elsewhere, and be free; but if he dared to return home with his property, it was taken out of his hands by the Board of Overseers, according to the unjust law.  His property had no more protection from their rapacity than the rest of the plantation.  In the name of Heaven, (with due reverence,) I ask, what people could improve under laws which gave such temptation and facility to plunder?  I think such experiments as our government have made ought to be seldom tried.