being in the right_, whether he _should_ put the verb in the singular or
the plural."--_Ibid._

OBS. 4.--The foregoing explanation has many faults; and whoever trusts to
it, or to any thing like it, will certainly be very much misled. In the
first place, it is remarkable that an author who could suspect in others
"the _want of a clear idea_ of the nature of a collective noun," should
have hoped to supply the defect by a definition so ambiguous and
ill-written as is the one above. Secondly, his subdivision of this class of
nouns into two sorts, is both baseless and nugatory; for that plurality
which has reference to the individuals of an assemblage, has no manner of
connexion or affinity with that which refers to more than one such
aggregate; nor is there any interference of the one with the other, or any
ground at all for supposing that the absence of the latter is, has been, or
ought to be, the occasion for adopting the former. Hence, thirdly, his two
rules, (though, so far as they go, they seem not untrue in themselves,) by
their limitation under this false division, exclude and deny the true
construction of the verb with the greater part of our collective nouns.
For, fourthly, the first of these rules rashly presumes that any collective
noun which in the singular number implies a plurality of individuals, is
consequently destitute of any other plural; and the second accordingly
supposes that no such nouns as, council, committee, jury, meeting, society,
assembly, court, college, company, army, host, band, retinue, train,
multitude, number, part, half, portion, majority, minority, remainder, set,
sort, kind, class, nation, tribe, family, race, and a hundred more, can
ever be properly used with a plural verb, except when they assume the
plural form. To prove the falsity of this supposition, is needless. And,
finally, the objection which this author advances against the common rules,
is very far from proving them useless, or not greatly preferable to his
own. If they do not in every instance enable the student to ascertain with
certainty which form of concord he ought to prefer, it is only because no
rules can possibly tell a man precisely when he ought to entertain the idea
of unity, and when that of plurality. In some instances, these ideas are
unavoidably mixed or associated, so that it is of little or no consequence
which form of the verb we prefer; as, "Behold, the _people_ IS _one_, and
_they have all_ one language."