It has been repeatedly asserted that the Constitution of the United States has become practically unamendable, when as a matter of fact its amendment does not involve any greater difficulties than were intended or than would seem reasonably necessary, or than would be provided if we were now framing a new national constitution. The prescribed machinery of a vote by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states simply compels deliberation and prevents hasty and unconsidered action. If the people of the country really desire a particular amendment to the Constitution of the United States, it ought to be readily obtainable within less than two years. Thus, the first ten amendments were proposed by Congress in September, 1789, and were adopted in those days of slow travel and difficult communication by eight states within six months and by the requisite three-fourths within two years. The twelfth amendment, proposed in 1803, was ratified in nine months. The thirteenth amendment, proposed by Congress in 1865, was ratified by the legislatures of twenty-seven out of the then thirty-six states within ten months; and the fifteenth amendment, the latest, proposed in February, 1869, was ratified by twenty-nine out of the thirty-seven states within one year. The delay in the adoption of the proposed sixteenth amendment authorizing Congress to levy an income tax is due wholly to the fact that there is a serious difference of opinion as to whether or not this power should be conferred, although the advocates of the amendment confidently proclaimed the existence of an almost universal desire on the part of the people for such an amendment to the Constitution.[22]