A half-century of conflict. France and England in North America. Part ...

;76 A MAD SCHEME. [1745.thirty-two years, during eighteen of which he waspresident of the board.These civil dignities served him as educators betterthan tutor or village school; for they brought himinto close contact with the chief men of the provinceand in the Massachusetts of that time, so differentfrom our own, the best education and breeding werefound in the official class. At once a provincialmagnate and the great man of a small rustic village,his manners aresaid to have answered to both positions,— certainly they were such as to make himpopular. But whatever he became as a man, helearned nothing to fit him to command an army andlay siege to Lonisbourg. Perhaps he felt this, andthought, with the governor of Rhode Island, that"the attempt to reduce that prodigiously strongtown was too much for New England, which had notone officer of experience, nor even an engineer. "^Moreover, he was unwilling to leave his wife, children,and business. He was of a religious turn ofmind, and partial to the clergy, who, on their part,held him in high favor. One of them, the famouspreacher, George Whitefield, was a guest at hishouse when he heard that Shirley had appointed himto command the expedition against Louisbourg.Whitefield had been the leading spirit in the recentreligious fermentation called the Great Awakening,wliich, though it produced bitter quarrels among1 Governor Wanton to the Agent of Rhode Island in London, 20December, 1745.