XLVI ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
I returned his circular with certain emendations, declarmg that, if 
10,000 persons should adopt those spellings, 1 would not. 
Changes of this kind can be opposed among ourselves only by free 
individual and collective effort. There is no prospect of any English 
academy ever being founded for the stamping of words, and phrases, 
and pronunciations and spellings. If it ever were founded, there is no 
prospect of any considerable number of Britons paying the least atten- 
tion toit. Is it not M. Taine who says the French love equality and care 
little for liberty; whereas the English care little or nothing for equality, 
but are determined to have liberty ? No doubt the love of liberty is a 
beautiful and a noble quality, but occasionally it may take strange direc- 
tions. Be this as it may, there is no chance of an English literary 
academy being formed, and it is only by influence and example that the 
spread of right principles on this or any other subject can be secured. 
For this reason it is all the more our duty to see that a heritage so 
precious as our mother tongue take no hurt at our hands or the hands 
of others. It is a splendid possession. May we not say of it, “ Spartam 
nactus es: hane orna.” <A good Providence has provided this beautiful 
thing for you, see that you add to its lustre—an appeal which can hardly 
be made in vain. 
But there is still one subject, present to the thoughts of all here— 
and of all the inhabitants of the great Empire of which we form a part— 
on which it is of absolute necessity that some words should be said on 
an occasion like the present—if those words were spoken only in the 
interests of human civilization. For, if this Society has any general 
end in view, contemplated in all its departments, it surely must be the 
advancement of human civilization ; and if ever, in the history of the 
world, there was a war undertaken with this simple end in view, it is the 
war now being carried on in South Africa, by the British against the 
Boers of the Transvaal and the Orange State. On this point there is a 
substantial agreement. The absurd charges of the war having originated 
in a desire on the part of Great Britain, or of British financiers, to gain 
possession of the mines of South Africa, can scarcely be believed even by 
those who put them forward. They are hardly worthy of a moment’s 
consideration. The origin of the war was the refusal of the Transvaal 
Government to consider the claims of the English speaking inhabitants 
—who form the majority of the population—to a share in the govern- 
ment of the country. Here were people paying more than three-fourths 
of the taxes of the country who had no voice whatever in the expendi- 
ture of the revenues of the country. This was bad enough; but even 
worse is the undeniable fact that the purity of the courts of justice was 
