in the community; and when the rest of the public is constantly reading
American writing without a thought that it is other than English
writing, it is hardly strange that American forms of speech creep daily
more and more largely into the English tongue. What is really strange is
that the educational authorities have been prepared to accept and to
utilise in English schools many American educational books carrying
American forms of speech and American spelling.

The morality or the wisdom of the English copyright laws is not at the
moment under discussion, but it is my own opinion (which I believe to be
the opinion of every Englishman who has given any attention to the
matter) that not on any ground of literary criticism, or because of any
canons of taste, but merely as a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence
to England, and for the sake of securing additional employment for
British labour, the laws of copyright are in no less radical and urgent
need of amendment than the English postal laws. What we are here
concerned with, however, is the effect of the present condition of these
laws as one of the contributory factors which are co-operating to lessen
the difference, once so wide and now so narrow, between the American and
the English tongue.

Nor can there be any doubt of the result of this twofold process if it
be allowed to continue indefinitely, working in England towards a
democratisation and Americanisation of the speech, and in America
towards a higher standard of taste, based on earlier English literary
models. The two currents, once divergent, now so closely confluent, will
meet; but will they continue to flow on in one stream? Or will the same
tendencies persist, so that the currents will cross and again diverge,
occupying inverse positions?

In a hundred years from now, when, as a result of the apparently
inevitable growth of the United States in wealth, in power, and in
influence, its speech and all other of its institutions will come to be
held in the highest esteem, is it possible that Londoners may vehemently
put forward their claim to speak purer American than the Americans
themselves--just as many Americans assert to-day that their speech is
nearer to the speech of Elizabethan England than is the speech of modern
Englishmen? Is it possible that it will be only in the common language
of Englishmen that philologists will be able to find surviving the racy,
good old American words and phrases of the