the iron? Who strike the iron? Who was in the street? Who were in the street?”—­Cobbett’s Gram., 245.  All the interrogative pronouns may be used in either number, but, in examples like the following, I imagine the singular to be more proper than the plural:  “What have become of our previous customs?”—­Hunt’s Byron, p. 121.  “And what have become of my resolutions to return to God?”—­Young Christian, 2d Ed., p. 91.  When two nominatives of different properties come after the verb, the first controls the agreement, and neither the plural number nor the most worthy person is always preferred; as, “Is it I?  Is it thou?  Is it they?”

OBS. 20.—­The verb after a relative sometimes has the appearance of disagreeing with its nominative, because the writer and his reader disagree in their conceptions of its mood.  When a relative clause is subjoined to what is itself subjunctive or conditional, some writers suppose that the latter verb should be put in the subjunctive mood; as, “If there be any intrigue which stand separate and independent.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 457.  “The man also would be of considerable use, who should vigilantly attend to every illegal practice that were beginning to prevail.”—­Campbell’s Rhet., p. 171.  But I have elsewhere shown, that relatives, in English, are not compatible with the subjunctive mood; and it is certain, that no other mood than the indicative or the potential is commonly used after them.  Say therefore, “If there be any intrigue which stands,” &c.  In assuming to himself the other text, Murray’s says, “That man also would be of considerable use, who should vigilantly attend to every illegal practice that was beginning to prevail.”—­Octavo Gram., p. 366.  But this seems too positive.  The potential imperfect would be better:  viz., “that might begin to prevail.”

OBS. 21.—­The termination st or est, with which the second person singular of the verb is formed in the indicative present, and, for the solemn style, in the imperfect also; and the termination s or es, with which the third person singular is formed in the indicative present, and only there; are signs of the mood and tense, as well as of the person and number, of the verb.  They are not applicable to a future uncertainty, or to any mere supposition in which we would leave the time indefinite and make the action hypothetical; because they are commonly understood to fix the time of the verb to the present or the past, and to assume the action as either doing or done.  For this reason, our best writers have always omitted those terminations, when they intended to represent the action as being doubtful and contingent as well as conditional.  And this omission constitutes the whole formal difference between the indicative and the subjunctive mood.  The essential difference has, by