The distinctive features in the taxation of property by the republic were the employment of specific duties, the fixing of a minimum valuation of land, and the discrimination against the property of non-residents and that held by agents or attorneys for others. Specific duties and minimum valuations were designed to do away with undervaluation, which is a characteristic weakness of the general property tax. Provided the objects subject to specific rates are of fairly uniform value and are-found by the assessor, the method is perhaps the simplest way of taxing property. The property so taxed by the republic, - slaves, livestock, pleasure carriages, watches, clocks, and land certificates might be expected to have among a frontier population no very great inequalities of value within each class. Evasion of assessment was the common practice, however, and the method of applying inelastic specific rates made the inequalities between individuals assessed and those not assessed more burdensome than would have been the case with an ad valorem system alone.1

1 bid., p. 868.

2 Act of February 3, 1845; ibid., p. 1141.

3 Act of February 4, 1841; ibid., p. 647.

Personal property constituted the most valuable part of the property of the republic and contributed the largest share of direct taxation. After 1842 such personalty as was taxable was subject to specific rates, with the exception of pleasure carriages, money loaned, and merchandise. In 1844 the specific taxes assessed amounted to $19,756, the ad valorem to $22,736; in 1845 they were respectively $21,525 and $20,872.2 When it is remembered that the ad valorem receipts included those from pleasure carriages, money loaned, and sales of merchandise, the larger contribution of personal property is evident.

The discrimination against the property of non-residents and that held by agents or attorneys finds its explanation in the hostility of a frontier people to absentee capitalists, and to the desire that land should be put to use and not held as a speculation. Suggestions were frequent that the tax rate should progress as the amount of land owned increased, the purpose being to make large landholders, both resident and non-resident, sell their holdings; but nothing like this was enacted.3

The features of the taxes on business are their undoubted heaviness upon all occupations and the selection of certain amusements for particularly burdensome charges. The act of January 16, 1840, especially illustrates these characteristics. Billiards, nine-pins, horse-racing, card playing, the theater and wax works were to the early Texans undesirable amusements, and the taxes imposed expressed the disapprobation entertained.1 The commercial or monied interests were also regarded as unproductive, and were the objects of some antipathy. The high license taxes imposed regardless of the size of the establishment, the taxes on sales, and the special burdens laid upon brokers and auctioneers give evidence of this feeling.2 The system of business taxes, however, like the property tax, broke down, especially after 1841.

1 The system of specific rates existed in both Louisiana and Alabama, from which many of the early Texans came. The similarity between the Texas statutes of January 16, 1840, and the Alabama acts of January 10, 1835, and January 13, 1837, is very close in respect to the enumeration of property, occupations subject to license taxes, penalties, and details as to assessment and collection.

2 There are no statistics for earlier years and none for receipts. Those quoted for 1844 are to be found in the Telegraph and Texas Register, January 8, 1844; those for 1845, in the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, February 15, 1846. The polls assessed for 1844 were 8,247; those for 1845, 10,730.

3 The Report of the Special Committee of the Senate on the Tariff, 1838, and the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, September 30, 1841, favored a progressive rate. The house committee on finance, to whom had been referred a bill proposing this scheme, reported adversely on January 5, 1844. on the ground that it lacked "fairness and equity"; House Journal, 8th Tex. Cong., p. 156.

Presidential messages and treasury and finance committee reports throughout the period are full of complaints of the ill-working of the whole system of direct taxation. This was evidenced also by the wholesale fashion in which the laws were changed annually down to 1842. The difficulties experienced were due in part to the inadequacy of the laws and in part to the unwillingness, and often to the inability, of the people to bear the taxes levied. In the beginning much land to which there were claimants escaped because the government deemed it inadvisable to open the land offices.3 Land certificates were valuable as representative of land, but they were not taxed until 1839. They were, however, one of the most intangible forms of property the assessors had to deal with, and evasion was comparatively easy. The non-resident holding of land was on an enormous scale, and as the lands so held were required to be rendered where the owner or agent resided, non-rendition and undervaluation were comparatively easy.1 The laws also required the rendition of lands by the owners, and a remedy for the evasion which this opened up was sought in the provision of the act of January 16, 1840, which required that the county surveyor should provide the assessor with a list of the recorded surveys in the county. This provision was repealed, however, in 1841 and the old method of self-assessment with the absence of system in reaching owners was restored. The fact that the population was widely scattered made the visits of the assessor and the collector difficult, and these officers usually waited in vain for the taxpayer to present himself for submission to a tax which no less a person than Henry Smith, secretary of the treasury under Houston, characterized as "odious."'2

1 The Alabama Act of January 5, 1837, has the same features. It imposes, for example, a tax of $2,000 on every billiard table, and the penalty for keeping a table without a license was $4,000. Race horses, public race tracks, cards, and museums, were also singled out for taxes that were so high as to appear to have had a sumptuary purpose.

2 The house committee on finance said in its report, December 22, 1838: "Repeal or remove the tariff, and you will place the great and sterling interests of the country in the hands and at the mercy of the commercial community." Houston, also, in his message of December 20, 1841, favored a diminution of direct taxation, because it bore immediately upon "the actual laborer and productive classes." House Journal, 3rd. Tex. Cong., p. 206.

The Alabama act of Jan. 5, 1837, suggests the Texas provisions in this respect. It levied a tax on sales of merchandise, and though land was taxed ten cents on the $100, money loaned was taxed twenty-five cents.

3 President Lamar's message, December 2, 1838.