One of the objections to the new Constitution in the minds of many people was the absence of a "bill of rights" containing those provisions for the protection of individual liberty and property (e.g., trial by jury, freedom of speech, protection from unreasonable searches and seizures) which had come down from the early charters of English liberties. In deference to this sentiment a series of ten brief amendments were proposed and speedily ratified. Another amendment (No. XI) was soon afterward adopted for the purpose of doing away with the effect of a Supreme Court decision. Thereafter, save for a change in the manner of electing the President and Vice-president, the Constitution was not again amended until after the close of the Civil War, when Amendments XIII, XIV, and XV, having for their primary object the protection of the newly enfranchised Negroes, were adopted. The Constitution was not again amended until the last decade, when the Income Tax Amendment, the amendment providing for the election of Senators by popular vote, the Prohibition Amendment, and the Woman Suffrage Amendment were adopted in rapid succession. Some of these will be discussed in later chapters. It is interesting to note that two of the amendments (No. XI, designed to prevent suits against a state without its permission by citizens of another state, and No. XVI, paving the way for the Income Tax) were called forth by unpopular decisions of the Supreme Court, and virtually amounted to a recall of those decisions by the people. These instances demonstrate the possibility of a recall of judicial decisions by constitutional methods, and tend to refute impatient reformers who preach the necessity of a more summary procedure. Such questions, however, lie outside the scope of this book. We emphasize here the fact that the great achievement of the Constitution was the creation of a dual system of government and the apportionment of its powers. That was what made it "one of the longest reaches of constructive statesmanship ever known in the world."[1] It offered the most promising solution yet devised for the problem of building a nation without tearing down local self-government. [Footnote 1: Fiske: "The Critical Period of American History," p. 301.] John Fiske, the historian, writing of the importance of preserving the constitutional equilibrium between nation and states, said:[1]