ifax in the July of 1757; but,
owing to the absence {240} of energy and celerity of movement from the
very day the project was decided upon in England until after the
arrival of the fleet in America, the French were able to get
reinforcements of ships and men into Louisbourg, and the English
admiral and general came to the resolve--so strange for Englishmen in
time of war--to run no risk in attacking the fortress. Loudoun
returned to New York, but too late to retrieve the injury he had done
to the northern colonies by withdrawing so large a force from the
frontier at a critical period, when Montcalm was marching on Fort
William Henry with such unfortunate results for English interests.
Holbourne sailed with his fleet for Louisbourg, and after a
half-hearted attempt to draw the French fleet, then safely moored under
the guns of the town, into an engagement, even the elements combined
against him, and when he had lost a number of his vessels on the rocky
Cape Breton coast, he returned to England to tell the story of his
failure.

It was at this critical period, when England so sadly needed a bold and
wise statesman at the head of her government in the place of weak and
incompetent men like Newcastle, that the great Pitt, better known as
Chatham at a later day, was called to office by the unanimous opinion
of the English people outside, perhaps, of a small selfish clique of
the aristocracy. It was his good fortune to be successful far beyond
the hopes of the majority of statesmen suddenly called upon to retrieve
national disaster. It was mainly through his inspiration--through the
confidence with which he inspired all {241} those who served the
country at this momentous epoch--that England became the centre of a
vast colonial empire such as the world never saw, even in the days when
Rome was mistress.

When Pitt was recalled to office in July, 1757, it was too late to
prevent the humiliation of England through the incompetency of
Holbourne, Loudoun, and Webb, and the year 1757 closed with Montcalm
triumphant in America. But while France neglected to give adequate
support to her brave sons in Canada, England rallied to the support of
Pitt, and the whole nation felt a confidence in the future which it had
never had during the administration of his predecessors. On the
continent of Europe, Pitt contented himself with giving the largest
possible subsidies of money to his great ally Frederick, and by
entrusting the comm