Rapid changes of language proceed from violent causes; but these causes cannot be supposed to exist in North America. It is contrary to all rational calculation, that the United States will ever be conquered by any one nation, speaking a different language from that of the country. Removed from the danger of corruption by conquest, our language can change only with the slow operation of the causes before-mentioned and the progress of arts and sciences, unless the folly of imitating our parent country should continue to govern us, and lead us into endless innovation. This folly however will lose its influence gradually, as our particular habits of respect for that country shall wear away, and our _amor patriæ_ acquire strength and inspire us with a suitable respect for our own national character. We have therefore the fairest opportunity of establishing a national language, and of giving it uniformity and perspicuity, in North America, that ever presented itself to mankind. Now is the time to begin the plan. The minds of the Americans are roused by the events of a revolution; the necessity of organizing the political body and of forming constitutions of government that shall secure freedom and property, has called all the faculties of the mind into exertion; and the danger of losing the benefits of independence, has disposed every man to embrace any scheme that shall tend, in its future operation, to reconcile the people of America to each other, and weaken the prejudices which oppose a cordial union. My design, in these dissertations, is critically to investigate the rules of pronunciation in our language; to examin the past and present practice of the English, both in the pronunciation of words and construction of sentences; to exhibit the principal differences between the practice in England and America, and the differences in the several parts of America, with a view to reconcile them on the principles of _universal practice_ and _analogy_. I have no system of my own to offer; my sole design is to explain what I suppose to be authorities, superior to all private opinions, and to examin local dialects by those authorities. Most writers upon this subject have split upon one rock: They lay down certain rules, arbitrary perhaps or drawn from the principles of other languages, and then condemn all English phrases which do not coincide with those rules. They seem not to consider that grammar is formed on language, and not language on grammar. Instead of examining to find what the English language _is_, they endeavor to show what it _ought to be_ according to their rules. It is for this reason that some of the criticisms of the most celebrated philologers are so far from being just, that they tend to overthrow the rules, and corrupt the true idiom, of the English tongue. Several examples of this will appear in the course of these Dissertations.