Webster was wont to defend himself against the common charge of proposing new forms of words, by showing that, if one went far enough back, he would be sure to come upon the same forms in English literature; that his aim was to restore, not to invent, and to bring back the language to its earlier and historic shape. This is a defense familiar to us in these later days of spelling reform; and no one doubts, who knows the chaos of English spelling before the days of printing, that authority could be found for any favorite mode of spelling a word. Webster claimed the same conservative principles in the matter of pronunciation, and stoutly declared that he was a champion for historic English sounds as opposed to the innovations offered by Sheridan, Walker, and Jamieson. "The language of a nation," he says in his Introduction, "is the common property of the people, and no individual has a right to make in-roads upon its principles. As it is the medium of communication between men, it is important that the same written words and the same oral sounds to express the same ideas should be used by the whole nation. When any man, therefore, attempts to change the established orthography or pronunciation, except to correct palpable errors and produce uniformity by recalling wanderers into the pale of regular analogies, he offers an indignity to the nation. No local practice, however respectable, will justify the attempt. There is great dignity, as well as propriety, in respecting the universal and long-established usages of a nation. With these views of the subject, I feel myself bound to reject all modern innovations which violate the established principles and analogies of the language, and destroy or impair the value of alphabetical writing. I have therefore endeavored to present to my fellow-citizens the English language in its genuine purity, as we have received the inheritance from our ancestors, without removing a landmark. If the language is fatally destined to be corrupted, I will not be an instrument of the mischief."