hed in running order in 1804. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth amendments were added after 1865 to prohibit slavery. They
were forced upon the unwilling Southern States. From 1804 to 1913 no
amendment was put through by the regular process. Yet in that time
efforts to amend were made on over one hundred and forty occasions. Men
had grown discouraged at last; they said that amendment was impossible.
The cumbrous system which has thus so long blocked all change was that
Congress must by a two-thirds vote in each House agree to submit an
amendment to the States. These must then pass upon the new law, each in
its own legislature. If three-fourths of the legislatures approved, the
amendment was to be accepted. Few of the proposed changes ever won a
two-thirds vote in both Congressional Houses; and of those few not one
had ever appealed to the necessary overwhelming majority of State
legislatures. The Senatorial amendment passed Congress several years
ago, and had long been knocking rather hopelessly at legislative doors.
Then the Income Tax amendment appeared. Congress passed it almost
hurriedly in a spasm of progressiveness in 1909. Then came the great
sweep of progressive policies to victory in the elections of 1912; and
legislatures everywhere awoke to the universal insistence on the Income
Tax. All the States but six approved the amendment; and one of the last
acts of President Taft during his administration was to proclaim its
adoption. The popular amendment swept along in its train the Senatorial
change; and the latter, though still opposed by most of the old South,
was ratified by all the rest of the States except Rhode Island and
Utah. So it also became law.

Nothing illustrates better the "tyranny of the dead hand" in the United
States than the history of the income tax. The Constitution laid it
down that no head tax or other direct tax should be imposed except by
apportioning it among the several States on the basis of their
population. No more effective barrier to any system of direct taxation
could possibly have been devised. It would seem clear that the main
intention of this Constitutional provision was not merely to protect
the people of the smaller States, but to force the United States
Government to depend for its revenue upon indirect taxes. Such, at any
rate, has been its effect. Legal ingenuity, however, can get round
anything. The Supreme Court decided as long ago as 1789 that an income
tax was