Captain Bill McDonald, Texas Ranger: A Story of Frontier Reform

by Albert Bigelow Paine

For, by this act, Congress required all property owners and all agents and representatives of such owners, to make out and deliver to the proper assessing officers inventories showing the value of all their properties, and to swear that same were just, true and faithful valuations and lists. If the assessor believed any valuation offered to him was too low, it was made his duty, summarily and without notice or formality, to call to his assistance two neighboring citizens, to be selected by himself, and the three of them were required to persuade and encourage the reluctant property owner into those straight and narrow paths where duty leads and virtue is its own and only reward. From the assessor and his chosen helpers there was no appeal. That which they said was the full value was the full value, both in law and in fact, and there was an immediate end of the controversy.

In these modern days of frock coats and silk stockings and peace and comfort, we would incline to think that the Act of 1837, which put a "big stick" in the hands of the assessor, would have been sufficiently strenuous to have satisfied even that most strenuous of officers, our worthy President Theodore Roosevelt. But there were mighty men in those old days, when Sam Houston was at the head of the Lone Star Republic, and this problem was as meal between their teeth. They enjoyed it to the uttermost. They enjoyed it so much that they could not keep their minds occupied with other things, and, in 1838, Congress amended and strengthened the original "full rendition" bill so as to require every property owner to swear a still harder swear, to wit, that his list was a true and perfect inventory and account of his property and its value. A true and perfect valuation! Think of it, O ye who strain at gnats in these meek and modern day! A most vigorous oath, indeed, was that. Strong and bitter, like the medicines they took in those good old times. And yet I must own to it, gentlemen, that I have nowhere heard or read that either the oaths or the medicines did them any harm.

I have recalled to your recollection those old days of the golden age of Texas for one purpose only, which is that you may be reminded how, in the words of Solomon, "there is nothing new under the sun." There is nothing new, not even our troubles, and I can imagine that, even in the time of the Republic, our citizens desisted momentarily from the lighting of Mexicans and the pursuit of hostile Indians to hold indignation meetings all the way from Nacogdoches to Matagorda Bay, where fierce protests were drawn and adopted, condemning Houston and Lamar and the members of the First Congress for their wickedness in procuring the enactment of a "full rendition" statute with which to oppress and impoverish the Lone Star people.

I, myself, am reminded in this connection of the solemn utterances of some of the daily newspapers, most excellent oracles of Democracy, warning us in editorial columns long that this is a new country, where a continuous stream of bottoms is dropping out of our real estate booms, and that it is a great big mistake to assess our new and fragile values at anything approaching their face. And in my mind's eye, I can see right now one of those ancient and beloved heroes, recently companion to the immortal Davy Crockett, the tails of his coonskin cap fluttering in the wind, addressing an indignation meeting in the days of the First Congress, arousing unlimited enthusiasm with the very same argument which is now so commonly used, founded upon the newness, three-quarters of a century ago, of this country of ours, which some of us profess to believe has not yet grown sufficiently old to tell the truth for purposes of taxation.

The statutes of Texas have always been "full rendition" statutes, and our Constitutions, except for that one which was adopted in 1836, have always been "full rendition" Constitutions. And, in my judgment, there can be no honest attempt at a fair adjustment of the burdens of a direct tax upon the general property of this or any other country which does not make a decent effort at an equalization in proportion to the true value of each article which is taxed. The true value of an article is necessarily its fair, full value, nothing more and nothing less. If we levy general property taxes, we are compelled to require by law that all property subject to the levy shall be taxed in proportion to its value, and such a rule is inevitably a law for a "full rendition."

If a government were to command that its taxables should be listed at one-fourth their full value, and that a tax of $1 on the $100 should be levied on the values so listed, it would in substance have enacted a law for the taxation of its property, at full value, at 25 cents on each $100, and no amount of figuring can make out of it anything less or anything more.

The proposition that property shall be taxed at one-fourth, or at one-fifth, or at any other fractional part of its true and full value is wholly inadequate to meet any of the objections which are urged against the "full rendition" bill. If a tract of land be assessed at $100 an acre at its full value, January 1, 1908, and by reason of any change in conditions, the value has diminished before the arrival of the tax-paying season, say December 31, 1908, to $50 an acre, and, if it be assumed that it would be an injustice under those circumstances to require the owner to pay a tax in December which is based upon such a valuation, still the slightest reflection will convince you that this injustice has not been obviated by assessing the land at $25 an acre and, at the same time, multiplying the tax rate by four. In either case precisely the same amount of money is exacted from the owner, and, in either case, the tax is in truth based upon the full value January 1st, which we have assumed to be $100 an acre, and no account is taken of any subsequent depreciation.

But, if it be urged that the owner will be better satisfied to pay 25 cents an acre if his land be valued at $25 an acre than he will be to pay the same 25 cents on the same acre upon a valuation of $100, then I can only answer by saying that the Texans with whom I am acquainted are so well fixed with brains that you can not fool them with a trick so transparent as this. If a citizen pays a tax of $50 on a 200-acre farm, he knows that he is out just $50 in good, common, hard cash, and all the assessors and collectors in the State can not fool him into the belief that he has paid only $40 by showing him how low his land was assessed and how high it was taxed. Having paid his money, he will feel neither better nor worse because of the valuation put upon his property, provided only that he has had a square deal as compared with the other taxpayers.

This is the whole of the tax question, as I see it—to deal justly with every man in the sight of God—to tax every person as nearly as possible in proportion to his ability to pay. And under any ad valorem system the measure of the ability of each individual and the only approximately fair measure which the ingenuity of man has ever been able to devise is found in the reasonable, full value of the taxable property of every owner.

No revenue law is wholly bad which tends in this direction and, on the other hand, every such law is good and valuable in direct proportion as it is so drawn that it will aid in bringing about this all-desirable equality in the imposition of public burdens.