The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-03-31
WHERE THE SUN NEVER SETS
EIs.,sSlsgt AND, SPAIN AND PORTUGAL \ CAN PUT FORWARD
suoh u Claim as Well ns the United
 States.


 That the sun never sets on the Brit ish empire is an axiom which suggests frather than defines the truth which in spired it. This, of course, is by no means of scientific or even literal exact ness. But we all recognize the meaning of the phrase which, like many another rhetorical gem of historic interest, IS very much older than the setting In which it has from time to time ap- peared It has been attributed to Pltt; and it no doubt received from him splendid send-off on it's introduction to the nineteenth century. In alluslon to British possessions and resources the prime minister used the then little known expression "The King of Eng land, on whose dominions the sun never sets" That it made a gr@at impression may well be imagined. Nor waa this felt the least strongly in America; for in addressing the senate some years af- terWard the eloquent Daniel Webster re- minded his hearers that England was power which had dotted the surface of the entire slobe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning 6rum b2at, following the sun and keep ing company with the hours, encircled the earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of Engand,' This graphic and pictur- esque enrichment raises the figure to a high poetic level, in itself suggestive of the inspiration of a former age. And as matter of fact, England neither coined nor adapted it for herself. The figure has fallen to us as a heritage of empire
 This is best shown by the fact that the phrase has been a sometime pos session of several nations. We unex- pectedly encounter it in the work of the quaint Thoma Fuller, who, in his sketch of the life of Sir Francis Drake, says that though a poor private man, the admiral hereafter undertook to avenge himself upon so mighty a mon- arch, who, as not contented that the sun riseth and setteth in his dominions may ssem to desire to make all his own where he fhineth'' There is no doubt about the monarch here referred to, nor of the fervor with which on so many oc- casions Drake ''singed the Spanish kings beard" It was in the reign of Philip IT. tlsat the Spanish monarchy at- tained it's highest point of splendor and dominion. When tho Ambassador Con- domar was combining business and pleasure at the English court he bade Spanish grandee who was returning to his own country remember him to the sun which he had not seen since his residence in England and which he would be sure to find in Spain.
 The Spaniards, however, had long been conscious that the sun was always shining on some of their territories In one of Howell's well known collections of letters, published in 1923. occurs this passage: Tn Philip Ills time, this crown came to his grandeur, and truly, to give the Spaniard his due, he is a Europe, Asia, Africa ard America, So the sun shines all the four and twenty hours of the natural day upon some part or other of his country for part of the antipodes are subject to him., And in his account of Historic Phrases Buchanan quotes the following sentence of a Dutch author in 1860: The King of Spain is a great potentate, who stands with one foot in the east and the other in the west, and the sun never sets that it does not shine on some of his dominionS" The same idea also finds expression in Guarinfs Pastor F'ido," written some seventy years ear Her, in which Catherine of Austria is spoken of as the illustrious daughter of the monarch on whose empire the sun never sets.
 But Portugal has also put forward her claim to an ever present sun, and cer- tainly not without some show of reason. Even now in proportion to the impor- tance of the mother country the Portu- guese dependencies are of considerable extent, No doubt she was surpassed by Spain in the great burst of maritime