would oppose whatever is slipshod and careless, and all blurring of
hard-won distinctions, but it would no less oppose the tyranny of
schoolmasters and grammarians, both in their pedantic conservatism,
and in their ignorant enforcing of newfangled 'rules', based not on
principle, but merely on what has come to be considered 'correct'
usage. The ideal of the Society is that our language in its future
development should be controlled by the forces and processes which
have formed it in the past; that it should keep its English character,
and that the new elements added to it should be in harmony with the
old; for by this means our growing knowledge would be more widely
spread, and the whole nation brought into closer touch with the
national medium of expression.

The Society, therefore, will place itself in opposition to certain
tendencies of modern taste; which taste it hopes gradually to modify
and improve. Its object will be best exhibited by stating a few
definite proposals which may be regarded as typical.

I. Literary taste at the present time, with regard to foreign words
recently borrowed from abroad, is on wrong lines, the notions which
govern it being scientifically incorrect, tending to impair the
national character of our standard speech, and to adapt it to the
habits of classical scholars. On account of these alien associations
our borrowed terms are now spelt and pronounced, not as English, but
as foreign words, instead of being assimilated, as they were in the
past, and brought into conformity with the main structure of our
speech. And as we more and more rarely assimilate our borrowings, so
even words that were once naturalized are being now one by one made
un-English, and driven out of the language back into their foreign
forms; whence it comes that a paragraph of serious English prose may