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Dutch, so that the Kaffirs could understand it. If this is so, it is another illustration of the essential feature that an international language must possess. Even the Boer farmers, under the stress of practical necessity, grasped the need of simplification.

The natural tendency towards elimination of exceptions is also strongly marked in the speech of the uneducated. Miss Loane, who has had life-long experience of nursing work among the poorest classes in England, tabulates (The Queen's Poor, p. 112) the points in which at the present day the language of the poor differs from that of the middle and upper classes. Under the heading of grammar she singles out specially superabundance of negatives, and then proceeds: "Other grammatical errors. These are nearly all on the lines of simplification. It is correct to say 'myself, herself, yourself, ourselves.' Very well: let us complete the list with 'hisself' and 'theirselves.' Most verbs are regular: why not all? bring? Let us say 'comed' and 'goed,' 'seed' and 'bringed' and 'teached.'" Miss Loane probably exaggerates with her "nearly all." For instance, as regards the uneducated form of the past tense of "to come," surely "come" is a commoner form than "comed." Similarly the illiterate for "I did" is "I done," not "I doed," which would be the regular simplification. But the natural tendency is certainly there, and it is strong.

Precisely the same tendency is observable in the present development of literary languages. They have all inherited many irregular verbal conjugations from the past as part of their national property, and these, by the nature of the case, comprise most of the commonest words in the language, because the most used is the most subject to abbreviation and modification. But these irregular types of inflection have long been dead, in the sense that they are fossilized survivals, incapable of propagating their kind. When a new word is admitted into the language, it is conjugated regularly. Thus, though we still say "I go—I went; I run—I ran," because we cannot help ourselves, when we are free to choose we say, "I cycle—I cycled; I wire—I wired"; just as the French say "télégraphier," and not "télégraphir," -oir, or -re.