The empire on which the sun never sets at the present time." In 1821, the "Caledonian Mercury" wrote of the British Empire, "On her dominions the sun never sets; before his evening rays leave the spires of Quebec, his morning beams have shone three hours on Port Jackson, and while sinking from the waters of Lake Superior, his eye opens upon the Mouth of the Ganges." Daniel Webster famously expressed a similar idea in 1834: "A power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drumbeat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth
The empire on which the sun never sets expression, the sun never sets in the Spanish dominions, but ever shines upon one part or other of them : which, to say truly, is a beam of glory [...]". Thomas Urquhart wrote of "that great Don Philippe, Tetrarch of the world, upon whose subjects the sun never sets." In the German dramatist Friedrich Schiller's 1787 play, "Don Carlos", Don Carlos's father, Philip II, says, "" ("I am called / The richest monarch in the Christian world; / The sun in my dominion never sets."). Joseph Fouché recalled Napoleon saying before the Peninsular War, "Reflect that the sun never sets