Now no such thing is expressed in their deed.  There is not a word about a Congregational minister; only “for the support of the gospel, according to the discipline and worship of the church in this place, which is Congregational.”

The General Court, therefore, gave a construction to the deed, which the deed never warranted.  The whole proceeding must be illegal and void.  The fee still remains in the Indians, and no power existed to take it from them without their whole consent as tenants in common, which they have never given, and could not give, because they were in law minors.  Mr. Fish was sent to Marshpee as a minister, and ordained in 1811.  The Indians, as a society, never invited him to come, or settled him.  They never gave him possession of the land or Meeting-house.  They were then minors in law, and could give no consent.  The white Overseers and Harvard College, were the only powers that undertook to give Mr. Fish possession of the property of the Indians.  It is true, he has held it twenty years, but the statute of quiet possession does not run against minors.  The Indians were declared minors, and could bring no action in court.

This is the true history of the parsonage and Meeting-house now wrongfully held by Mr. Fish.  Have not the Indians a right to their own property?  Has the Legislature and Harvard College, a right to establish a religion by law in Marshpee, and take the property of the Indians to support a minister they will not hear?  Where did the General-Court get any power to give away the property of the Indians, any more than the lands of white men, held in common?  They cannot take the property of the Indians to support a private individual.  Was it then a public use?  But the Constitution says “no part of the property of any individual, can with justice be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of the representative body of the people, and whenever the public exigencies require that the property of any individual should be appropriated to public uses, he shall receive a reasonable compensation therefor.”  Apply this to the act of the General Court, by which Mr. Fish holds four hundred acres of the common lands of the Indians, against their consent, and for which they never received a dollar, and answer.  Is not the Constitution violated, every day he is suffered to remain on the plantation, against their consent, subsisting on the property of the poor Indians, not to benefit them, but to preach to the whites?

Look at this subject also, in connexion with religious freedom.  The old article of the Constitution, gave the Legislature power to require the towns to provide for public worship at their own expense, where they neglected to make such provisions themselves; but it also provided that the towns, &c. “shall at all times have the exclusive right of electing their public teachers, and of contracting with them for their support and maintenance.”