24 SEP 2018 – Does the State of Texas have authority to take our property or homes for unpaid taxes? Or like a constitutionally protected right is our property also inalienable? To the latter, our Founders said, “Yes.”
The Texas Constitution has two sources of authority:
Direct delegation by the people (Art. 1, Sec. 2)
Adoption of pre-existing common law (Art. 16, Sec. 48)
While our Courts have declared that property tax pre-existed the Texas Constitution in common law, our two most important founders, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, said the pre-existing common law was inapplicable.
Jefferson wrote in “Summary View of the Rights of British America,”
“In the earlier ages of the Saxon settlement feudal holdings were certainly altogether unknown; and very few, if any, had been introduced at the time of the Norman conquest. Our Saxon ancestors held their lands, as they did their personal property, in absolute dominion, disencumbered with any superior, answering nearly to the nature of those possessions which the feudalists term allodial.”
(The term allodial is defined as, “Free from the tenurial rights of a feudal overlord.” And the meaning of tenurial is, “The holding of property by a superior in return for services to be rendered.”)
Those who lost the Battle of Hastings lost their property. William the Norman gave it with feudal duties to those whom he wanted to have it.
Jefferson continued, “Feudal holdings were therefore but exceptions out of the Saxon laws of possession, under which all lands were held in absolute right. These, therefore, still form the basis, or ground-work, of the common law, to prevail wheresoever the exceptions have not taken place. America was not conquered by William the Norman, nor its lands surrendered to him, or any of his successors. Possessions there are undoubtedly of the allodial nature.”
In “Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law” (1764) John Adams declared that Canon Law was “Ecclesiastical Tyranny,” Feudal Law was “Civil Tyranny” and America was free from both.
“It was this great struggle, that peopled America. It was not religion alone, as is commonly supposed; but it was a love of universal Liberty, and a hatred, a dread, an horror of the infernal confederacy before described, that projected, conducted, and accomplished the settlement of America.”
“After their arrival here, they began their settlement, and formed their plan both of ecclesiastical and civil government, in direct opposition to the canon and the feudal systems.”
Can a “feudal” property tax be imposed by delegation? Here’s what Samuel Adams said in “Rights of Colonists.”
“…it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defense of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”
John Locke said in his “Second Treatise of Government,”
“…no body can transfer to another more power than he has in himself; and no body has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life or property of another.”
How do our courts today justify our present system? Their only rebuttal to any of this is referenced in a 1922 Texas Supreme Court case.
“The Constitution was framed with reference to the common law, and in judging what the Constitution means we should keep in mind that it is not the beginning of the law of the state, but that it assumes the existence of a well-understood system, which was still to remain in force and be demonstrated, and that the constitutional definitions are in general drawn from the common law.” Great S. Life Ins. Co. v. City of Austin
Like William the Norman, your State has assumed authority over your property, and enslaved you to sustain it. And authority cannot be delegated to take another’s property for the same.
This is Civil Tyranny.
Because no tax should have the power to leave you homeless.
No Relief. No Reform. #EliminatePropertyTax