Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/184

 176 Jb G, YOUNG. assessment blanks it prescribed even provided headings and columns for the descriptions and valuations of farming lands, yet the six counties in which lands were for the first time taxed under this law, had the receipts from such land tax remitted to them. The authorities in the other counties had still held that lands were not taxable. However, an act of 1856 was more effective in bringing land into the class of taxable property. It provided that "All lands shall be sub- ject to taxation as real estate First, when the owner or oc- cupant has resided four years upon his claim ; second, where land has passed by deed, transfer, sale or otherwise; third, when the land has been entered in the land office. ' ' The forms of these specifications disclose the reasons, in part at least, why land had escaped taxation. Legal titles, or evidence of title, which patents give, were very slowly and tardily obtained in Oregon. Procedure for securing patents was not instituted until after the passage of the "Donation Act" in September, 1850. And it is not unlikely that the leg- islators, who belonged distinctively to the claim-holding class, should have favored the practice of relieving those, who in improving their claims were doing most for the upbuilding of the community, from the burdens of taxation. The law contemplated that the assessor, elected in June, should proceed with his work early in July; that the assess- ment roll should be filed complete, ready for the county board at its September meeting, when the levies should all be made ; that this roll, with warrant for the collection attached, should be iri the hands of the sheriff or treasurer but little after the middle of the month; and that the collection should have been mainly effected by the close of October. This roll, with the warrant, and an account of his acts thereon in the collection of the taxes through payments made or distraint and sale of oods and chattels, and the list of unpaid taxes on real estate, the sheriff did not return until the first Monday in April. A r-opy of these county assessment rolls was to have been in the hands of the Territorial Auditor within thirty days after the