"Whatever may be Mr. Goodyear's claims," declared Mr. Webster early in his speech, "to the great invention now spread out to the ends of the earth and known to all the world, this record shows, other records show, everybody knows that he is a man of inquisitive, ingenious, laborious mind."
Then Webster summarized the history of Goodyear's long struggle, referring first to the days when India rubber was useless in weather that was either very hot or very cold.
"I well remember," he asserted, "that I had some experience in this matter myself. A friend in New York sent me a very fine cloak of India rubber and a hat of the same material. I did not succeed very well with them. I took the cloak one day and set it out in the cold. It stood very well by itself. I surmounted it with the hat, and many persons passing by thought that they saw on the porch the farmer of Marshfield."
Next the speaker reminded his hearers of the present improvements in such articles, all due to the perseverance of his client, and made a prophecy which our day is rapidly fulfilling:
"I look to the time when ships that traverse the ocean will have India rubber sails, when the sheathing of ships will be composed of this metallic vegetable production. I see, or think I see, thousands of other uses to which this extraordinary product is to be applied."
Then with delicate irony the great lawyer attacked the argument of Mr. Choate. "Those observations are all very eloquent and very pathetic, but they have one drawback. Nothing is beautiful that is not true. The invention exists. Everybody knows and understands it, and everybody connected in former times with the manufacture of India rubber has been astonished and surprised at it.
Daniel Webster
"If Charles Goodyear did not make this discovery, who did make it? They do not meet Goodyear's claim by setting up a distinct claim of anybody else. They attempt to prove that he was not the inventor by little shreds and patches of testimony. We want to know the name and the habitation and the location of this man upon the face of the globe who invented vulcanized rubber, if it be not he who now sits before us."