Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/390

384 negroes and Indians. A year later there was a protest entered upon the journal of the Legislature denying its right to levy a tax of any kind "without the consent of the free voters of the territory previously obtained." This position was taken on the ground that the people on the day they resolved on organization (May 2, 1843), had voted that no tax should be levied and that they had confirmed this vote in adopting the subscription basis for their finances on the 5th of July following.

While the majority of the Legislature went ahead resolutely completing the new basis for the public revenues of the colony several provisions in the measures they enacted indicate that they expected opposition to the taxes they were imposing. Their law providing for the appointment of the assessor made it his duty "to take every man's name who shall refuse to pay a tax and return the list of all such persons refusing to the clerk and recorder, whose duty it shall be to preserve the same." Section 4 of the revenue law provided "that any person refusing to pay a tax as in this act required shall have no benefit of the laws of Oregon and shall be disqualified from voting at any election in this country." The collector's report for the same year refers to "the unsettled state of the public mind relative to the subject of taxation.

The revenue system of the Provisional Government was fully developed through the act of December 11, 1845. It retained the features given it by this act until 1854. The ideas embodied in the act of 1844 were adhered to. They were only brought out more explicitly and more in detail. The machinery for administering the system was developed by bringing into requisition the county assessors and the county sheriffs for collectors. The rate was doubled, making