earliest reference in which the differing details of American speech are described, the passage deserves to be quoted in full:

"Not to mention small differences, I would observe that the inhabitants of New-England and Virginia have a peculiar pronunciation which affords much diversion to their neighbours. On the other hand, the language in the middle States is tinctured with a variety of Irish, Scotch and German dialects which are justly censured as deviations from propriety and the standard of elegant pronunciation. The truth is, usus est Norma Loquendi, general custom is the rule of speaking, and every deviation from this must be wrong. The dialect of one State is as ridiculous as that of another; each is authorized by local custom; and neither is supported by any superior excellence. If in New-England we hear a flat, drawling pronunciation, in the more Southern States we hear the words veal, very, vulgar pronounced weal, wery, wulgar; wine, winter, etc., changed into vine, vinter; soft becomes saft; and raisins and wound, contrary to all rules and propriety, are pronounced reesins, woond. It is the present mode at the Southward, to pronounce u like yu, as virtyue, fortyune, etc., and in a rapid pronunciation these become virchue, forchune, as also duty, duel, are changed into juty, juel.”

In the Dissertations Webster later desires the New England "yeoman" to alter his "drawling nasal manner of speaking," and likewise when he says marcy for mercy, or kiow for cow, he would have him change these pronunciations to accord with the more general custom. "Vast numbers of people" who in Boston and Philadelphia say weal and wessel for veal and vessel are asked to resign their peculiarities for the sake of uniformity. The Virginian is asked to pronounce his final r's more fully, and all persons who cherish fashionable distinctions of pronunciation are told to put away such undemocratic affectations.

Though this kind of compromise which Webster found it necessary to advocate in order to establish his standard of national use remains as much a necessity to-day as it ever was, national use based upon the speech of educated speakers abides as the only general standard which has recognized value in American English. The

...

bearing of this upon American speech was realized early by those who gave careful thought to American conditions. Cooper, in his Notions of the Americans (1828), analyzed the situation thoroughly and soundly. He declared that in America, "while there are provincial, or state peculiarities, in tone, and even in pronunciation and use of certain words, there is no patois," Notions, I, 62. An American, he avers, might distinguish between a Georgian and a man from New England, but a foreigner could not, and he adds that though Americans pass for natives every day in England, "it is next to impossible for an Englishman to escape detection in America." The reasons why it is impossible, in Cooper's opinion, for an Englishman to escape detection are that in England not only are local distinctions more highly developed and fully preserved, but also a "slang of society" exists there with a "fashion of intonation . . . which it is often thought vulgar to omit," with the result that speakers who escape the local dialects are likely to fall into this fashionable dialect. Cooper clearly recognized the futility of attempting to estimate American speech by a British standard. "If it be assumed," he remarks, Notions, II, 123, "that the higher classes in London are always to set the fashion in pronunciation, and the best living writers in England are to fix the meaning of words, the point is clearly decided in their favour, since one cannot see on what principle they are to be put in the wrong." Cooper acknowledged that for England the standard of speech is to be found in London, since there congregate those "whose manners, birth, fortune, and political distinction make them the objects of admiration." So powerful was the authority of the cultivated society of the metropolis of British life, that it seemed to Cooper absurd to suppose that in comparison with this authority, either the church or the stage or education exerted any but a slight influence upon British speech. In other words, Cooper believed that England had a so clearly recognized and admired social aristocracy, an aristocracy of birth, wealth, and wit, centered in London, that it easily provided the standards for all things of the spirit. In America, however, he thought a different state of affairs existed. "If we had a great capital, like London," he observed,

Notions, II, 124, "where men of leisure, and fortune, and education, periodically assembled to amuse themselves, I think we should establish a fashionable aristocracy, too, which should give the mode to the forms of speech. . . . But we have no such capital, nor are we likely, for a long time to come, to have one of sufficient magnitude to produce any great effect on the language. . . . The habits of polite life, and even the pronunciation of Boston, of New York, of Baltimore, and of Philadelphia, vary in many things, and a practised ear may tell a native of either of these places, by some little peculiarity of speech. There is yet no predominating influence to induce the fashionables of these towns to wish to imitate the fashionables of any other. If any place is to possess this influence, it will certainly be New York;" but even this Cooper thinks will not come to pass, and that "an entirely different standard for the language must be established in the United States, from that which governs so absolutely in England." Where is that standard to be found? Cooper's answer is that it must be found in the speech of the nation as a whole, that in fact it already is found there. For if the people of America were like the people of any other country on earth, "we should be speaking at this moment a great variety of nearly unintelligible patois," whereas in reality the American people speak the English language "as a nation better than any other people speak their language." "This resemblance in speech can only be ascribed to the great diffusion of intelligence, and to the inexhaustible activity of the population, which, in a manner, destroys space." "The distinctions in speech between New England and New York, or Pennsylvania, or any other State," he continues, "were far greater twenty years ago than they are now," a change which cannot simply be explained as due to migration, since migration "would often introduce provincialisms without correcting them, did it not also, by bringing acute men together, sharpen wits, provoke comparisons, challenge investigations, and, finally, fix a standard."

For the last twenty years, concludes Cooper, it has been a matter of hot dispute in which of the large towns in America the best English is spoken. "The result of this discussion has been to convince

most people who know anything of the matter, that a perfectly pure English is spoken nowhere, and to establish the superiority, on one point in favor of Boston, on another in favor of New York, and so on to the end of the chapter." Social standards being thus disposed of, as well as fashionable society, the church, the stage, Congress, the court, "for there is none but the President," and the fashions of speech in England, the only guide to a standard speech which Cooper finds to be left is reason, and he is convinced that "in another generation or two, far more reasonable English will be used in this country than exists here now."

These opinions were expressed, it will be remembered, before Cooper's return to America from his seven year's residence in Europe. His notions of America expressed after his return are much less optimistic. "Without a social capital," so he wrote in the Preface of Home as Found (1838), "with twenty or more communities divided by distance and political barriers, her people, who are really more homogeneous than any other of the same numbers in the world perhaps, possess no standard for opinion, manners, social maxims, or even language." The truth lay between these two extremes of statement. A national standard is, to be sure, not a perfectly realizable standard, and in that sense the people of America possessed no standard of speech. What they possessed, however, in this conception of a national speech, was a guide to conduct as effectual as any recognized or formal rule could be. Perhaps also Cooper's opinion of American speech as governed by reason calls for some interpretation. What he evidently meant to do was to distinguish between an instinctive social and traditional attitude towards speech, and one in which habits are determined to a greater extent by choice and intention. The latter he regarded as the attitude of Americans towards their speech, and in this sense their language might justly be called a "reasonable English."

In the earlier years of the American republic, this insistence upon the importance of a uniform and independent national speech was a logical result of the fear of disintegration which must always beset

those interested in maintaining a federation of independent states. "But this I will presume to affirm," wrote Alexander Hamilton, Works, ed. Lodge, II, 38, "that from New Hampshire to Georgia the people of America are as uniform in their interests and manners as those of any established in Europe." The frequency with which one comes upon assertions like this is evidence that the fear of the contrary could not have been remote.

One of the few utterances of the Philological Society, which flourished during the first years of the republic, is contained in a letter, dated New York, July 4, 1788, and signed by Josiah Hoffman, president, approving Webster's American Spelling Book and "recommending it to the use of schools in the United States, as an accurate, well digested system of principles and rules, calculated to destroy the various false dialects in pronunciation in the several States, an object very desirable in a federal republic." This letter was frequently reprinted by Webster in editions of his spelling book. It may seem a little strange that mature and important citizens should concern themselves about anything so insignificant as an elementary spelling book. But to their minds, the elementary spelling book carried a burden of deep meaning. Anything that might decrease the danger of disruption was eagerly seized upon in those troubled years. Not only the writers, grammarians and dictionary makers of the early years of the republic, but the statesmen as well expressed themselves emphatically on the importance of maintaining a uniform national speech in America. With the large increase of migration and the expansion of the country westward in the early nineteenth century, the necessity for the cultivation of a national standard seemed to many observers more pressing than ever. Commenting on one of the minor recommendations of his pronouncing speller, the first edition of which appeared in 1819, Cummings remarks, p. x, that "if we consider the great importance of preserving uniformity in our country, and of avoiding what already begins to be called northern and southern pronunciation, no attempt to preserve harmony in the republic of letters will be regarded as too minute." "As we become more extended," he