Was this from a notion, that you and ye, thus employed, were more analogous to thou and thee in the singular number?”—­Churchill’s Gram., p. 25.  I answer, No; but, more probably, from a notion, that the two words, being now confessedly equivalent in the one case, might as well be made so in the other:  just as the Friends, in using thee for you, are carelessly converting the former word into a nominative, to the exclusion of thou; because the latter has generally been made so, to the exclusion of ye.  When the confounding of such distinctions is begun, who knows where it will end?  With like ignorance, some writers suppose, that the fashion of using the plural for the singular is a sufficient warrant for putting the singular for the plural:  as,

   “The joys of love, are they not doubly thine,
    Ye poor! whose health, whose spirits ne’er decline?”
        —­Southwick’s Pleas. of Poverty.

    “But, Neatherds, go look to the kine,
      Their cribs with fresh fodder supply;
    The task of compassion be thine,
      For herbage the pastures deny.”—­Perfect’s Poems, p. 5.

OBS. 23.—­When used in a burlesque or ludicrous manner, the pronoun ye is sometimes a mere expletive; or, perhaps, intended rather as an objective governed by a preposition understood.  But, in such a construction, I see no reason to prefer it to the regular objective you; as,

   “He’ll laugh ye, dance ye, sing ye, vault, look gay,
    And ruffle all the ladies in his play.”—­King, p. 574.

Some grammarians, who will have you to be singular as well as plural, ignorantly tell us, that “ye always means more than one.”  But the fact is, that when ye was in common use, it was as frequently applied to one person as you:  thus,

   “Farewell my doughter lady Margarete,
    God wotte full oft it grieued hath my mynde,
    That ye should go where we should seldome mete: 
    Now am I gone, and haue left you behynde.”—­Sir T. More, 1503.

In the following example, ye is used for thee, the objective singular; and that by one whose knowledge of the English language, is said to have been unsurpassed:—­

   “Proud Baronet of Nova Scotia! 
    The Dean and Spaniard must reproach ye.”—­Swift.

So in the story of the Chameleon:—­

   “’Tis green, ’tis green, Sir, I assure ye.”—­Merrick.

Thus we have ye not only for the nominative in both numbers, but at length for the objective in both; ye and you being made everywhere equivalent, by very many writers.  Indeed this pronoun has been so frequently used for the objective case, that one may well doubt any grammarian’s authority to condemn it in that construction.  Yet I cannot but think it ill-chosen in the third line below, though right in the first:—­