"_Who_ do you speak _to_?" "_Who_ did he marry?" are challenged as bad English; but _whom_ do you speak _to_? was never used in speaking, as I can find, and if so, is hardly English at all. There is no doubt, in my mind, that the English _who_ and the Latin _qui_, are the same word with mere variations of dialect. _Who_, in the Gothic or Teutonic, has always answered to the Latin nominative, _qui_; the dative _cui_, which was pronounced like _qui_, and the ablative _quo_; in the same manner as _whose_ has answered to _cujus_, in all genders; _whom_ to _quem_, _quam_, and _what_ to _quod_. So that _who_ did he speak _to_? _Who_ did you go _with_? were probably as good English, in ancient times, as _cui dixit?_ _Cum quo ivisti?_ in Latin. Nay, it is more than probable that _who_ was once wholly used in asking questions, even in the objective case; _who_ did he marry? until some Latin student began to suspect it bad English, because not agreeable to the Latin rules. At any rate, _whom_ do you speak _to_? is a corruption, and all the grammars that can be formed will not extend the use of the phrase beyond the walls of a college. The foregoing criticisms will perhaps illustrate and confirm an assertion of Mr. Horne Tooke, that "Lowth has rejected much _good_ English." I should go farther and assert that he has criticized away more phrases of _good_ English, than he has corrected of _bad_. He has not only mistaken the true construction of many phrases, but he has rejected others that have been used generally by the English nation from the earliest times, and by arbitrary rules, substituted phrases that have been rarely, or never used at all. To detect such errors, and restrain the influence of such respectable names, in corrupting the true idiom of our tongue, I conceive to be the duty of every friend to American literature. On examining the language, and comparing the practice of speaking among the yeomanry of this country, with the stile of Shakespear and Addison, I am constrained to declare that the people of America, in particular the English descendants, speak the most _pure English_ now known in the world. There is hardly a foreign idiom in their language; by which I mean, a _phrase_ that has not been used by the best English writers from the time of Chaucer. They retain a few obsolete _words_, which have been dropt by writers, probably from mere affectation, as those which are substituted are neither more melodious nor expressive. In many instances they retain correct phrases, instead of which the pretended refiners of the language have introduced those which are highly improper and absurd.