Now let us pass to an imagination which is, perhaps, the grandest in
American oratory, but which was as perfectly natural as that of the
"cold molasses," or "God's flat-iron," of the New England farmer,--as
natural, indeed, as the "sky-blue, God's color," of the New England boy.
Daniel Webster, standing on the heights of Quebec at an early hour of a
summer morning, heard the ordinary morning drum-beat which called the
garrison to their duty. Knowing that the British possessions belted the
globe, the thought occurred to him that the morning drum would go on
beating in some English post to the time when it would sound again in
Quebec. Afterwards, in a speech on President Jackson's Protest, he dwelt
on the fact that our Revolutionary forefathers engaged in a war with
Great Britain on a strict question of principle, "while actual suffering
was still afar off." How could he give most effect to this statement? It
would have been easy for him to have presented statistical tables,
showing the wealth, population, and resources of England, followed by an
enumeration of her colonies and military stations, all going to prove
the enormous strength of the nation against which the United American
colonies raised their improvised flag. But the thought which had
heretofore occurred to him at Quebec happily recurred to his mind the
moment it was needed; and he flashed on the imagination an image of
British power which no statistics could have conveyed to the
understanding,--"a Power," he said, "which has dotted over the surface
of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose
morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the
hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the
martial airs of England." Perhaps a mere rhetorician might consider
superfluous the word "whole," as applied to "globe," and "unbroken," as
following "continuous"; yet they really add to the force and majesty of
the expression. It is curious that, in Great Britain, this magnificent