use of their Meeting-house, for the ordination of their blind minister, and he was ordained in a private dwelling.  Though not possessing the eloquence of the blind preacher, so touchingly described in the glowing and chaste letters of Wirt’s British Spy, yet there is much to admire in the simple piety and sound doctrines of “Blind Jo;” and he will find a way to the hearts of his hearers, which the learned divine cannot explore.

There is another denomination on the plantation, organized as “The Free and United Church,” of which William Apes is the pastor.  This denomination Mr. Fish charges with an attempt to usurp the parsonage, wood-land and the Meeting-house; he denounces, as a “flagrant act,” the attempt of the Indians to obtain the use of their own Meeting-house, and appeals to the sympathies of the whole civilized community to maintain by law the Congregational worship, which, he says, “is the most ancient form of religious worship there!” “Why should Congregational worship be excluded to make room for others?” asks the Rev. Mr. Fish.  “Where will be the end of vicissitude on the adoption of such a principle, and how is it possible, amid the action of rival factions, for pure religion to be promoted.” [Pages 7, 8, 9, of Mr. Fish’s memorial.  Senate, No. 17.] Is this language for a Christian minister to address to the Legislature of Massachusetts?  To petition for an established Church in Marshpee?  Can he ever have read the third Article of the Bill of Rights, as amended?

What has been the result of those “rival factions,” in Marshpee?  Blind Jo and William Apes, have forty-seven Indian members of their churches, (fourteen males,) in good standing, collected together in three years.  The missionary has baptized but twenty in twenty-two years.  The Indian preachers have also established a total abstinence Temperance Society, without any aid from the missionary, and there are already sixty members of it, who, from all the evidence in the case, there is no reason to doubt, live up to their profession.

I do not say this to detract from the good the missionary has done; I doubt not he has done much good, and earnestly desired to do more; but when he denounces to the Legislature other religious denominations, as usurpers and “rival factions,” it is but reasonable that a comparison should be drawn between the fruit of his labors and that of those he so severely condemns.

I confess, I am struck with surprise, at the following remarks, in the memorial of the Rev. Mr. Fish.  Speaking of the complaint of the Indians respecting their Meeting-house, that it is not fit for respectable people to meet in, being worn out; he says, “As it was built by a white Missionary Society, and repaired at the expense of the white Legislature of the State, perhaps the whites may think themselves entitled to some wear of it, and being