OBS. 12.—­Dr. Webster’s doctrine now is, that none of the English pronouns have more than two cases.  He says, “mine, thine, his, hers, yours, and theirs, are usually considered as [being of] the possessive case.  But the three first are either attributes, and used with nouns, or they are substitutes.  The three last are always substitutes, used in the place of names WHICH ARE UNDERSTOOD.”—­“That mine, thine, his, [ours,] yours, hers, and theirs, do not constitute a possessive case, is demonstrable; for they are constantly used as the nominatives to verbs and as the objectives after verbs and prepositions, as in the following passages.  ’Whether it could perform its operations of thinking and memory out of a body organized as ours is.’—­Locke.  ’The reason is, that his subject is generally things; theirs, on the contrary, is persons.’—­Camp.  Rhet. ’Therefore leave your forest of beasts for ours of brutes, called men.’—­Wycherley to Pope.  It is needless to multiply proofs.  We observe these pretended possessives uniformly used as nominatives or objectives.[210] Should it be said that a noun is understood; I reply, this cannot be true,” &c.—­Philosophical Gram., p. 35; Improved Gram., p. 26.  Now, whether it be true or not, this very position is expressly affirmed by the Doctor himself, in the citation above; though he is, unquestionably, wrong in suggesting that the pronouns are “used in the place of [those] names WHICH ARE UNDERSTOOD.”  They are used in the place of other names—­the names of the possessors; and are governed by those which he here both admits and denies to be “understood.”

OBS. 13.—­The other arguments of Dr. Webster against the possessive case of pronouns, may perhaps be more easily answered than some readers imagine.  The first is drawn from the fact that conjunctions connect like cases.  “Besides, in three passages just quoted, the word yours is joined by a connective to a name in the same case; ’To ensure yours and their immortality.’  ‘The easiest part of yours and my design.’ ’My sword and yours are kin.’  Will any person pretend that the connective here joins different cases?”—­Improved Gram., p. 28; Philosophical Gram., p. 36.  I answer, No.  But it is falsely assumed that yours is here connected by and to immortality, to design, or to sword; because these words are again severally understood after yours:  or, if otherwise, the two pronouns alone are connected by and, so that the proof is rather, that their and my are in the possessive case.  The second argument is drawn from the use of the preposition of before the possessive.  “For we say correctly, ’an acquaintance of yours, ours, or theirs’—­of