an action, or that any one of these corps
will come up with him. The effect to be produced by this mode of
operation is to oblige him to move constantly, and with great celerity.
When reduced to this necessity, he cannot venture to stop to plunder the
country, and he does comparatively but little mischief; at all events
the subsistence of his army becomes difficult and precarious, the
horsemen become dissatisfied, and they perceive that their situation is
hopeless, and they desert in numbers daily; the freebooter ends by
having with him only a few adherents, and he is reduced to such a state
as to be liable to be taken by any small body of country horse, which
are the fittest troops to be then employed against him.

In proportion as the body of our troops, to be employed against a
freebooter of this description, have the power of moving with celerity,
will such freebooter be distressed. Whenever the largest and most
formidable bodies of them are hard pressed by our troops, the village
people attack them upon their rear and flanks, cut off stragglers, and
will not allow a man to enter their villages; because their villages
being in some degree fortified, they know well that the freebooters dare
not wait the time which would be necessary to reduce them. When this is
the case, all their means of subsistence vanish, no resource remains
excepting to separate, and even this resource is attended by risk, as
the village people cut them off on their way to their homes.

_Dispatch, May 27, 1804._

* * * * *

_Importance of Secresy in Public Affairs_.

There is nothing more certain than that of one hundred affairs
ninety-nine might be posted up at the market-cross, without injury to
the public interests; but the misfortune is that where the public
business is the subject of general conversation, and is not kept a
secret, as a matter of course, upon every occasion, it is very difficult
to keep it secret upon that occasion on which it is necessary. There is
an awkwardness in a secret which enables discerning men (of which
description there are always plenty in an army) invariably to find it
out; and it may be depended upon that, whenever the public business
ought to be kept secret, it always suffers when it is exposed to public
view. For this reason secresy is always best; and those who have been
long trusted with the conduct of public affairs are in the habit of
never making known public business