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

by Albert Bigelow Paine

Granting that taxes are apportioned with reasonable fairness, there is but one way whereby an impartial reduction can be had and the benefits of such reduction distributed proportionately and honestly among the taxpayers, and this way is by cutting down the expenses of the government. Every other effort is either the pursuit of a ghost, leaving the pursuer empty handed if he were to succeed in catching it, or it is an effort at tax dodging. The average taxpayer is no shirk, and the very best for which he can hope and the things for which he should always be demanding are, first, an economical administration of public affairs, and, second, the utmost fairness in the distribution of public burdens.

The Constitution of Texas, as I have already shown, has always commanded an equality in taxation, to be attained by levying upon all property in proportion to its value. The laws of Texas have been enacted in obedience to the constitutional mandate, as full rendition laws, but have until the late session of the Thirtieth Legislature failed in one respect, at least, for they provided no adequate means by which they might be enforced. And under these laws, which on the face required a fair assessment, but did not undertake to compel obedience to their provisions, a practice of evasion was begun and spread all over the State, until a condition prevailed which was anarchy, pure and simple. County strove against county and neighbor against neighbor, each one trying unjustly to shift some portion of his rightful burden to the shoulders of another. It was a reign of lawlessness, gentlemen, when, as some of you members have demonstrated, the average assessment in one county was only 24 per cent. of the value of the property assessed, while the average in another county was as much as 75 per cent. And the remaining counties of the State ranged themselves anywhere you please between these two extremes.

Equality in taxation was a thing dead and forgotten, and honorable people were being taught to look with contempt upon the affidavits which were required to be made before the assessors. A strong and manly people who throughout their history had held the vice of lying in peculiar detestation, were made accustomed to falsehoods, uttered for profit, under the supposed sanction of an oath. A condition prevailed which would in time have compelled the moral deterioration of all citizens.

Now, it is certain that it is one of the most important of the functions of government that it shall secure justice and fair dealing as between all those who are subject to its jurisdiction. But more than this, and more than all else, it is the duty of those who are in control of public affairs that they shall permit no condition to continue which threatens to undermine the moral character of its people. For I venture the opinion that civilization is not builded of capital and labor alone, but that its chief component parts are the love of virtue and the sense of honor and the devotion to truth and integrity which are in the hearts of all persons, and if these good attributes are no longer actuated by these high ideals, then I predict that mankind will have become from that moment forward incapable of maintaining social order.

The practice of undervaluing property for purposes of taxation, which had become common and almost universal in Texas, was destructive of all possibility of justice as between the respective owners, and had in addition thereto a distinct tendency to debase the morals of an uncontaminated and virtuous people. The movement for what I will venture to call purer and better laws did not begin in the Thirtieth Legislature, but years and years ago, and the so-called Full Rendition act of 1907 is merely a mile-stone in the forward march of a progress which has continued throughout the ages, and which will never end.

The statute for the taxation of banks and banking capital is a "full rendition" statute, designed to enable and to require assessors to list at full value the stocks or properly of such institutions and all funds employed in that particular business. The act for the taxation of the intangible assets of railroads, an act which I had the pleasure of assisting to pass in the Twenty-ninth Legislature, is another "full rendition" law, under the operations of which nearly $174,000,000 of additional railroad values is exposed to view and listed and taxed. These and other statutes of the same kind, which I have not the time to mention, are just and fair, if all other property is also assessed approximately at its value, but they become discriminatory and oppressive as soon as undervaluations of other taxables are purposely allowed.

I am fully aware that there are certain vices which appear to be necessarily inherent in any system that can be devised for the direct taxation of both real and personal property. And while I am not inclined to believe that these vices render this character of tax more difficult of fair apportionment than is any other, yet I would not for a moment attempt to render blind either myself or you to those imperfections and weaknesses of human nature which make it apparently impossible entirely to effect the purpose of any law, no matter how just or wise it may be. But I would remind you that we can not give ground in the face of this argument without abandoning all effort at an orderly rule of society and plunging headlong into the deadly chaos of anarchy. If our inability, entirely and in all cases, to enforce a full rendition law is just cause for the abandonment of the full rendition principle, then, in the same way and for the same reason, we shall be driven from any other plan that we may adopt. Indeed, if we once admit the force of this objection, we must abandon all law, for in no case are we able satisfactorily to enforce any statute which is upon our books.

Remember, gentlemen, I make no pretense that perfection has been attained in the act of the Thirtieth Legislature, or that the act is incapable of improvement. What I am contending is that it is a step forward, and that this body, standing as it does for the ideal aspirations of the business men of Texas, must take no step backward. To repeal this statute, setting up nothing better in its place, retreating to a condition of which you, as thoughtful and patriotic citizens, must have been sick at heart, may bring us to have "fewer laws," but I am not able to persuade myself that those laws which are left will thereby have become any the better.

In my judgment, ex parte affidavits, which have the effect of making the truth cost money and of rewarding falsehood as if it were a virtue and not a vice, ought not to be exacted in any but the rarest of cases, and only where no other source of information can reasonably be found. And, for this reason, I have long preferred that the visible property of the State should be valued and assessed by the assessor rather than by the owner. But I am greatly in the minority in my opinion of this subject, and because that opinion is of absolutely no consequence, I refrain from enlarging upon it.