OBS. 14.—­As the simple word who differs from which and what, in being always a declinable pronoun; so its compounds differ from theirs, in being incapable of either of the double constructions above described.  Yet whoever and whoso or whosoever, as well as whichever and whichsoever, whatever and whatsoever, derive, from the affix which is added, or from the peculiarity of their syntax, an unlimited signification—­or a signification which is limited only by the following verb; and, as some general term, such as any person, or all persons, is implied as the antecedent, they are commonly connected with other words as if they stood for two cases at once:  as, “Whoever seeks, shall find.”  That is, “Any person who seeks, shall find.”  But as the case of this compound, like that of the simple word who, whose, or whom, is known and determined by its form, it is necessary, in parsing, to treat this phraseology as being elliptical.  The compounds of who do not, therefore, actually stand for two cases, though some grammarians affirm that they do.[193] Example:  “The soldiers made proclamation, that they would sell the empire to whoever would purchase it at the highest price.”—­Goldsmith’s Rome, p. 231.  That is—­“to any man who would purchase it.”  The affix ever or soever becomes unnecessary when the ellipsis is supplied; and this fact, it must be confessed, is a plausible argument against the supposition of an ellipsis.  But the supposing of an antecedent understood, is here unavoidable; because the preposition to cannot govern the nominative case, and the word whoever cannot be an objective.  And so in all other instances in which the two cases are different:  as, “He bids whoever is athirst, to come.”—­Jenks’s Devotions, p. 151.  “Elizabeth publicly threatened, that she would have the head of whoever had advised it.”—­HUME:  in Priestley’s Gram., p. 104.

OBS. 15.—­If it is necessary in parsing to supply the antecedent to whoever or whosoever, when two different cases are represented, it is but analogous and reasonable to supply it also when two similar cases occur:  as, “Whoever borrows money, is bound in conscience to repay it.”—­Paley. “Whoever is eager to find excuses for vice and folly, will find his own backwardness to practise them much diminished.”—­ Chapone. “Whoever examines his own imperfections, will cease to be fastidious; whoever restrains humour and caprice, will cease to be squeamish.”—­Crabb’s Synonymes.  In all these examples, we have the word in the third person, singular number, masculine gender, and nominative case.  And here it is most commonly found.  It is always of the third person; and, though its number may be plural; its gender,