[…] in the pronouns we distinguish the object from the subject or nominative case: ‘he him’, ‘they them’, etc. By this difference, the distinction of subject and object relation is kept so clearly before us that we transfer it in apprehension to the whole class of nouns, and reckon them also as possessing objective cases, though there is really none such in the language.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.216-217