SUPPORTING BRIEF #7: DE USUFRUCTU; THE INSTITUTES OF JUSTINIAN, Page 1
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This researcher, after seeing the claim made upon the peoples' labor by the defendants on page 7 of their MOTION TO DISMISS, continued in his study of the writings of old. We think we are progressing in freedom, when, in reality, we are in a continental retreat back through the long corridor of time where the servile doctrines of old have once again reappeared.
A usufructuary was a creature of the Roman Law, and was expounded upon in detail in The Institutes of Justinian. Justinian, who was Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire from 527 A.D. to 565 A.D., ordered the codification of the Roman Law. What I was able to find through an old book search was a copy of The Institutes of Justinian (By Thomas Collett Sandars, M.A., Barrister-at-Law, Longmans, Green, & Co., London, N.Y., & Bombay, 1903). The Institutes were a concise compilation of the Roman Law, apart from the actual Digest, that was designed to give the Roman citizen an understanding of the workings of Roman Law. It can be safe to assume that liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people. Ignorance is the great curse of mankind, and it is unfortunate that politicians have historically chosen to prey upon ignorance to gain position and power rather than to excuse ignorance in favor of liberty and to try and eliminate ignorance though education. Education that is of most value is that education that first teaches us our rights as human beings, for a people without rights are slaves.
Justinian and those who comprised the Institutes were very intelligent people. They were well versed in the law and explained in detail the law of Rome at the time of Justinian. Actually, it is quite fascinating to see these old doctrines once again at work in our body politic, for it reveals the follies of politicians that believe that they alone can create utopia by statute.
All that this researcher was looking for in studying the Institutes were mainly the laws that governed slaves and various servitudes. Hence, much matter was passed over, such as the laws of heirs, wills, tutors, etc. My mind was focused on the laws that effected labor and the fruits of labor. One of the things that caught my eye was LIB. II, Tit. IV. DE USUFRUCTU, the definition of which is:
"Usufruct is the right to use and enjoy things belonging to another, provided that the substance of the things used remains unimpaired. For it is a right over something corporeal; and if this thing perishes, the usufruct itself necessarily perishes also." D. vii. 1. 1, 2.; The Institutes of Justinian, pg. 125.
This can readily been seen today. For example, when a worker dies his capacity to labor also perishes, and the government looses its usufruct over that human being's labor.
The term "usufruct" was, in Roman times, attached to various forms of servitudes and always attached to the status of slavery. For example, under LIB. II, Tit. IX. PER QUAS PERSONAS NOBIS ADQUIRTUR, we read:
"We acquire not only by ourselves, but also by those we have in our power; also by slaves, of whom we have the usufruct; and by those freemen and slaves belonging to others whom we possess bona fide. Let us examine separately these different cases." Gai. ii. 86.; ibid., pg. 157.
Today, social insurance is mainly acquired by the political authority exercising a usufruct over the labor of the people. Hence, all those receiving old age pensions, government subsidies, welfare, state mandated medical insurance, and so forth, receive their doles because the government exercises the right of usufruct over the peoples' labor. A usufructuary is one who has the right and enjoyment of a usufruct. That is the government we live under today, for they have gained the use and disposal of our labor to conduct their massive social experiments. The income tax, as we have seen in SUPPORTING BRIEF #1, was never designed to be used in this way.
The slave in Rome had what was called a peculium. This was property that the master allowed the slave to have, and if the slave damaged the master in some way, then the peculium of the slave was at the master's disposal to make restitution to the master for the slave's misdeeds, whether intentional or unintentional. The slave could acquire no property by his own labor that was beyond the power of the master to seize:
"As to slaves of whom you have only the usufruct, it has been decided that whatever they acquire by means of anything belonging to you, or by their own labour, shall belong to you." Gai. ii. 91.; ibid., pg. 161.
The usufructuary was entitled to the fruits of the slave, that is, to his services, and to the profits derived from letting out his services to others. This type of activity was also common in the southern states in pre civil war times. In reading Hinton Helper of North Carolina's book entitled Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet it (A.B. Burdick, N.Y., 1860), we can see that slave labor was compensated in the southern states as was also other forms of labor. (slave labor- $115 per annum: non-slaveholding white labor- $84 per annum, ibid., pg. 380) However, Helper saw that the slaveholders had secured complete power in the southern states, and all labor in the South, irregardless of race, was bound to some form of servitude. As Helper put it:
"The magistrates in the villages, the constables in the districts, the commissioners of the towns, the mayors of the cities, the sheriffs of the counties, the judges of the various courts, the members of the legislatures, the governors of the States, the representatives and senators in Congress- are all slaveholders." ibid., pg. 159.
Helper was one of the few non-slaveholding whites with sufficient education to see through the slaveholders' system of government, and saw how the slaveholders were, by exercising a controlling influence on the southern economy, able to keep the non-slaveholding whites in a condition of lifetime servitude by controlling their level of subsistence. The non-slaveholding whites were virtually disenfranchised and had no power in framing the laws that operated upon them, but they were allowed the privilege of voting,- that is, they could vote for the slaveholder of their choice.
"Thus our disappointment gives way to a feeling of intense mortification, and our soul involuntarily, but justly, we believe, cries out for retribution against the treacherous slave-driving legislators, who have so basely and unpatriotically neglected the interests of their poor white constituents and bargained away the rights of posterity. Notwithstanding the fact that the white non- slaveholders of the South, are in the majority, as five to one, they have never yet had any part or lot in framing the laws under which they live. There is no legislation except for the benefit of the slaveholders. As a general rule, poor white persons are regarded with less esteem and attention than negroes, and though the latter is wretched beyond description, vast numbers of the former are infinitely worse off. A cunningly devised mockery of freedom is guarantied to them, and that is all. To all intents and purposes they are disfranchised, and outlawed, and the only privilege extended to them, is a shallow and circumscribed participation in the political movements that usher slaveholders into office." ibid., pg. 42.
What I see today, based on my research, is that this nation is on a course which will lead it to ultimate disaster. Of course, there may be another Merlin of economics waiting in the wings, but what can Merlin do now but further expand the currency and extend credit. As Justice McReynolds so aptly put it in his final sentence uttered in the minority opinion that dissented in the celebrated gold-clause cases of 1935: "And the shame and humiliation of it all no one of us can foresee." The Saturday Evening Post, April 20, 1935 ed., pg. 5.
Going back to Justinian, we can see that the same logic that applied in his day applied in the days of the slaveholders of the southern states. According to Justinian's law:
"So, too, he who has the use of a slave, has only the right of himself using the labour or services of the slave." D. vii. 8. 12. 5, 6.; The Institutes of Justinian, pg. 132.
According to the slaveholders:
"But, as we have seen, a limited property, or a right to the labor of a man, does not deny or annul all his rights, nor necessarily any one of them. This argument needs no further refutation. For we acknowledge that the slave has rights; and the limited or qualified property which the master claims in him, extending merely to his personal human labor and his lawful obedience, touches not one of these rights." Cotton is King and Pro-Slavery Arguments (Pritchard, Abbott & Loomis; Augusta, Ga., 1860), pp. 315-16.
Seeing the similarities between Roman slavery and the slavery that existed in the southern states in pre civil war times, Justice Daniel, in the Dred Scott decision, stated:
"The institution of slavery, as it exists and has existed from the period of its introduction into the United States, though more humane and mitigated in character than was the same institution, either under the republic or the empire of Rome, bears, both in its tenure and in the simplicity incident to the mode of its exercise, a closer resemblance to Roman slavery than it does to the condition of villanage, as it formerly existed in England. Connected with the latter, there were peculiarities, from custom or positive regulation, which varied it materially from the slavery of the Romans, or from slavery at any period within the United States." Dred Scott v. Sanford 19 How 393, 477-78.
Villanage (or villeinage), as was expounded upon in SUPPORTING BRIEF #6: SERFDOM, was the main form of serfdom that existed during the Middle Ages when feudalism flourished in England. The essence of the status of serfdom was also that of performing services for another, which naturally required a certain amount of labor. So, even though slavery may take on several different forms, the one thing that is always a given is the master's claim to the service and labor of the slave.
Justinian and those who codified the Roman Law in his day could see that there was no middle ground between the status of freeman and that of slave. Under LIB. I, Tit. III. DE JURE PERSONARUM we read:
"The chief division in the rights of persons is this: men are all either free or slaves." Gai. i. 9.; The Institutes of Justinian, pg. 13.
This argument applies today. Many people today will argue that we are a "free" people, but they are not using their sense of reason when they make the argument. Slavery is a status issue. It always has been. When labor is taxed and regulated as commerce, and when our childrens' status is predetermined at birth by the state issuing the child its number which identifies its labor as commerce, labor is not "free," it is bound to servitude. Any animals, for instance, that a person owns will have offspring from time to time, and those offspring also become the property of the owner.
"So, too, all the offspring of which you are the owner, become by the same law your property." D. xli. 1. 6.; ibid., pg. 98.
Since the maxim partus sequitur ventrem applies to persons who have the status of slavery, we can see that the offspring of slaves are in the same condition as the offspring of animals owned by a person. For example, it is common knowledge among ranchers that soon after a calf is born, the rancher puts his brand on the calf so that his property is identified. So too, when our children are assigned their numbers shortly after birth, the state has identified its property in that newborn child. This is also important, for we are not talking about the fleshly human being as being property, but the labor in the human being as being property. This is why, in the Institutes, we see the term "property in the slave."
"A master sued in a noxal action on account of his slave, frees himself if he gives up his slave to the plaintiff, and then the property in the slave is thus transferred for ever." Gai. iv. 76.; ibid., pg. 466.
What is property is the labor, not the fleshly human body of the slave. This same error in reasoning was widespread among the abolitionists in Lincoln's day and is widespread today. If labor is free, then the people are free; if labor is bound to servitude, then the people are not free. The logic is really quite simple, but the effects of propaganda combined with human emotion blinds many to the most basic of truths.
Today, the usufructuary (state), as already noted, exercises and enjoys the right of usufruct over the labor of the people and has determined that this will be the permanent condition in America by pre-determining the status of our children at birth. All who labor in America are allowed a peculium by their masters (state). This peculium which the master (state) allows the slaves to have is contingent on the slaves paying the masters (state) their fief. The fief is paid by the slaves filing and paying income tax upon their earnings from labor every year. The slave who refuses to give to the master (state) the quantity of labor the master demands will put his peculium in jeopardy, since the same number that identifies the slave's labor as commerce is also used to identify the slave's peculium. Virtually all financial dealings today have the workers' social security numbers (TIN numbers) associated with it. The master (state) has cleverly structured his political system where the slave's peculium is readily found in the event the slave becomes disobedient and quits filing and paying income tax on their labor. Once the peculium is found, the master (state) will seize whatever portion of the slave's peculium the master wills according the master's statutes. Much law is devoted to slaves in the Institutes, and for good reason. Rome was definitely a servile state, and the bulk of its revenue came from the labor of slaves.
It is interesting to note the variety of services that the masters demanded of their slaves. For example, some slaves were appointed by their masters as commanders of a vessel, and some slaves managed shops for their masters (Gai. iv. 71.; ibid., pg. 460). In short, the slave did not own his own labor, it was subject to the disposal of another.
Rome was initially a Republic, but gradually declined into an Empire. Correspondingly, the United States was initially a Republic, but, given the fact that labor has been nationalized, and that those exercising political power take the position that this will be the permanent condition of the people, it has assumed the character of an Empire. The footings upon which national regimentation is based had its roots with the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Victory Tax of 1942. Both these laws had no parallel in United States tax history because they were direct taxes on labor without discrimination.
The first emperors of Rome were only the chief magistrates of the Republic. However, Augustus usurped power, and his successors inherited the powers that Augustus usurped. Eventually, the legislative power was eroded to the point to where it was swallowed up by the executive power. As Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States stated:
"It is in the legislative halls that liberty commits suicide, although legislative bodies usually succeed in maintaining their forms. For 200 years the Roman Senate continued as a scene of social distinction and noisy prattle after it had surrendered its responsibilities and the Roman State had become a tyranny." The Challenge to Liberty (Charles Scribners' Sons, N.Y., 1934), pg. 126.
Mr. Hoover's statement is indeed correct, for on page xxv of Mr. Sandars' INTRODUCTION to The Institutes of Justinian we read:
"By degrees the emperor usurped the sole legislative authority, either dictating to the senate what it was to enact, or, in later times, enacting it himself."
Let us replace the word "emperor" with "bureaucrat." Tell me, what difference is there if there is one big emperor or multitudes of little emperors? Shall tyranny and injustice be administered by a single tyrant or an oligarchy? Or shall it be administered by millions of people wanting their cups to be filled by the politicians at the expense of the peoples' labor, which necessitates the creation of an oligarchy by the Congress? The American people are increasingly understanding the meaning of socialism. There is no "soak the rich." All there really is is servitude, and that varies in degree according to who you are and your circumstances.