Cases argued and decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Texas, during the latter part of the Tyler term, 1885, and the Galveston term, 1886. Volume 65. Page: 309

                                
1886.]               MESSNER v. GIDDINGg.                  309
Opinion of the court.
nor plea involving a matter of controversy. It was a proceeding,
essentially administrative in its character, and not a controversy
between party and party, in which adverse claim of right was asserted,
such as was evidently contemplated by the constitution. If it is
claimed that in the court, as a court of equity, under that clause, the
power existed, it must be replied, that the district court, whether as
a court of law or a court of equity, had only such power as the constitution
gave it. There is no such thing as the inherent power of a
court, if, by that, be meant a power which a court may exercise without
a law authorizing it. That clause of the constitution empowered
district courts to exercise all the power given, whether the procedure
necessary to accomplish that purpose be such as pertains to a court
of law or a court of equity; but it in no manner conferred upon such
courts the power to exercise any and every power, which, at any time,
may have been exercised by courts of chancery in England or elsewhere.

Courts of chancery in England, at an early day, may have exercised
such a jurisdiction as the district court for Washington county assumed
to exercise, but we have no inclination now to consider the
ground on which the power was then claimed, for, at the present day,
no such power is claimed to exist in a chancery court in England, unless
given by act of parliament. Taylor v. Phillips, 2 Vesey, Sen,. 2, 3;
Russell v. Russell, 1 Molloy, 525.
Such a power has been asserted in some of the courts of the states
of this Union. In Ex Parte Jewett, 16 Ala. 410, the power was held
to exist when land was held by a trustee for the use of a married
woman and her children, who were minors, she consenting, but, in
that case, it was admitted that the English authorities did not sustain
the ruling.
The same ruling was made in Rivers v. Durr, 46 Ala. 419, but the
case was one of sale for partition, which could not otherwise be
made. These cases were followed in Goodman v. Winter, 65 Ala.
435, but the facts were such as would probably have required the
same disposition of the case on other grounds.
In Huger v. Huger, 3 Des. Eq. 18, the same principle was assumed,
but the infant was given his day after majority to show cause against
the decree.  In Re Salisbury, 3 Johns. Ch. 347, the decree only permitted
the conversion of timber on a lunatic's land. Williams v.
Harrington, 11 Iredell 620, was expressly based on statutes.
The Kentucky cases, frequently cited to sustain such a power, are
based on statutes which give it. None of the cases above cited were
based on facts similar to those existing in this case. The case of Cus