thing to Mr. Fish beyond the period of their own existence?  By the law establishing the Overseers, they had no power beyond leasing land for two years.  How then, could the Overseers grant for life to Mr. Fish the improvement of the parsonage and Meeting-house?  They might have given it to him from year to year, while they were in office, but on the abolition of the Overseers, in 1834, and a restoration of civil rights to the owners of the fee of the parsonage, the Marshpee Proprietors, how could Mr. Fish continue to hold the parsonage against their will?  Was it by virtue of his settlement, so that he now claims the land as a sole corporation?  But a minister cannot be settled or constituted a sole corporation, without a parish to settle him.  “A minister of a parish seized of lands in its right as parsonage lands, is a sole corporation, and on a vacancy, the parish is entitled to the profits;” 2d Dane’s Abrg. 342. 7 Mass.  Rep. 445.  Mr. Fish is not seized of a parsonage in right of any parish or religious society, and therefore he cannot be a sole corporation.  In point of fact, there was no legal parish in Marshpee, when Mr. Fish went there and took possession, under the Overseers, and not in right of the parish.  A parish or precinct as the law then was, must be a corporation entitled and required to support public worship, and having all the powers and privileges necessary for that purpose. (See 8th Mass.  Rep. 91.) And where there has been no parish as such created in a town, the town itself will be considered a parish. (15 Mass.  Rep. 296.) Marshpee was not a town.  The Marshpee Indians were minors in law, and there was no legal parish to settle a minister, or to hold a parsonage, and no one to make contracts as such.  Harvard College had no power to settle a minister in Marshpee, nor had the Overseers any such power.  Their supervision was temporal and not ecclesiastical.  Besides, the actual Congregational society which subsisted in Marshpee, when Mr. Fish was sent there, in 1811, was composed of a majority of whites.  Mr. Fish himself testified before the Committee, that the church at Marshpee, in 1811, consisted of sixteen whites and but five colored persons.  The church members were a majority of whites, so that even had the church voted to settle Mr. Fish, it would have been a vote of white men having no interest in the premises, and not of Indian Proprietors.  Mr. Fish admits that the church passed no vote.  It was asserted by one of the old Overseers, Mr. Hawley, that five Indians called on him, after Mr. Fish had preached there, and personally expressed a wish to have him stay with them, but there was no official act, and no vote of the church or society, and no assent of the Proprietors of Marshpee in any form.