Nevertheless, it would be erroneous to suggest that the dual system of government is a failure. It still endures in providing a large measure of authority to the States in their purely domestic concerns, and, in a country that extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, whose northern border is not very far from the Arctic Circle, and whose southern border is not many degrees from the Equator, there are such differences in the habits, conventions, and ideals of the people that without this dual form of government the Constitution would long since have broken down. It is not too much to say that the success with which the framers of the Constitution reconciled national supremacy and efficiency with local self-government is one of the great achievements in the history of mankind. 3. _The third principle was the guaranty of individual liberty through constitutional limitations._ This marked another great contribution of America to the science of government. In all previous government building, the State was regarded as a sovereign, which could grant to individuals or classes, out of its plenary power, certain privileges or exemptions, which were called "liberties." Thus the liberties which the barons wrung from King John at Runnymede were virtually exemptions from the power of government. Our fathers did not believe in the sovereignty of the State in the sense of absolute power, nor did they believe in the sovereignty of the people in that sense. The word "sovereignty" will not be found in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. They believed that each individual, as a responsible moral being, had certain "inalienable rights" which neither the State nor the people could rightfully take from him.