erstood that the greater part of the parish and church agree in his
religious sentiments and opinions. If afterwards the minister adopts
a new system of divinity, the parish retaining their former religious
belief, so that the minister would not have been settled on his
present system, in our opinion the parish have good cause to
complain." On this ground the Court decided that Mr. Burr had
forfeited his settlement.

The principle is the same applied to the relation Mr. Fish holds
to the Marshpee Indians. He was placed over them by others, and the
Indians are now compelled either to lose all the benefits of their own
parsonage, or to hear a man in whose doctrines they do not believe,
and whom they cannot consent to take as their spiritual teacher.

Upon a full investigation into this branch of the inquiry, there seems
to be no legal or equitable ground, on which Mr. Fish can claim to
hold the parsonage and Meeting-house against the Proprietors, and he
must therefore, be regarded as a trespasser, liable to be ejected,
and the men he employs to cut and cart wood from the plantation, are
liable to indictment under the new law of 1834.

The invalidity of title, is however, a still stronger ground against
Mr. Fish's right of adverse occupancy, which he now holds, and a case
in principle precisely like this, has been decided by the Supreme
Court of Massachusetts. It occurred in 1798, before there was a
reporter of the Supreme Court. Hon John Davis, United States District
Judge, was counsel for the Indians, and Samuel Dexter, for the
defendant. It was tried on a demurrer, before the Supreme Court in
Barnstable, upon an action of ejectment, Proprietors of Marshpee, vs.
Ebenezer Crocker. Judge Paine delivered the opinion of the Court in
favor of the Indians. Judge Benjamin Whitman of Boston, was also, we
believe, concerned in the cause. The substance of the case, as stated
by Judge Davis and Judge Whitman, was thus:

Ebenezer Crocker of Cotuet, had furnished an Indian woman, (known
as the Indian Queen,) with supplies for many years. She occupied and
claimed in severalty as her own, a valuable tract of about 200 acres
of land on the Marshpee Plantation, called the neck, of which tract
she gave a deed in fee, some time before her death, to said Crocker,
in consideration of the support he had given her. The consideration
at that time, was not very greatly disproportioned to the value of
the land. After her death, she having lef