text:  Wherefore is it that in all similar cases in this Ceylonese case in Major Baillie's Mysore case in the Cabool case uniformly the privates are wiser than their officers? In a case of delicacy or doubtful policy certainly the officers would have been the party best able to solve the difficulties; but in a case of elementary danger where manners disappear and great passions come upon the stage strange it is that poor men labouring men men without education always judge more truly of the crisis than men of high refinement