s the language of the whole
people. That is not, of course, entirely true, for there are grades of
speech in the United States, but it is relatively true--true for the
purpose of a comparison with the conditions in Great Britain. The
Englishman may be surprised at the number of solecisms committed in the
course of an hour's talk by a well-to-do New Yorker whom he has met in
the company of gentlemen in England. He would perhaps be more surprised
to find a mechanic from the far West commit no more. The tongue of
educated Englishmen is not the tongue of the masses--nor is it a
difference in accent only, but in form, in taste, in grammar, and in
thought. If in England the well-to-do and gentle classes had commercial
transactions only among themselves, it is probable that a currency
composed only of gold and silver would suffice for their needs; copper
is introduced into the coinage to meet the requirements of the poor.
American speech has its elements of copper for the same reason--that all
may be able to deal in it, to give and take change in its terms. It is
the same fact as we have met before, of the greater homogeneousness of
the American people--the levelling power (for want of a better phrase)
of a democracy.

The Englishman may object, and with justice, that because an educated
man must incorporate into his speech words and phrases and forms which
are necessary for communication with the vulgar, there is no reason why
he should not be able to reserve those forms and phrases for use with
the vulgar only. A gentleman does not pay half-a-crown, lost at the card
table to a friend, in coppers. Why cannot the educated American keep his
speech silver and gold for educated ears? All of which is just. There
are people in the United States who speak with a preciseness equal to
that of the most exacting of English precisians, but they are not fenced
off as in England within the limits of a specified class; while the
common speech of the American people, which is used by a majority of
those who would in England come within the limits of that fenced area,
is much more careless in form and phrase than the speech of educated
Englishmen. It may be urged that it is much less careless, and better
and vastly more uniform, than any one of the innumerable forms of speech
employed by the various lower classes in England; which is true. The
level of speech is better in America; but the speech of the educated and
well-to-do is generally muc