Thanks to the person at the MTP who responded to my Quayle query.
I think Hirst's source is much sounder than the one I had in mind,
which was a speech Twain made about Carnegie's simplified spelling
scheme.  Twain's point in that speech was that we didn't need to
rationalize spelling so much as we needed to reform the alphabet so
that it would reflect the diversity of the human voice in all of its
variant languages and dialects.  My regret is that Quayle's delight
in variant spellings doesn't extend or translate into a respect for
cultural heterogeneity.