Daily National Intelligencer

The number of officers filling our towns and cities and public houses at this period, has excited some notice and no small degree of surprise. It has been asked, why at this moment of peril on the lines, so many public servants should be absent from their posts? Having made some enquiry on this head, we are enabled to answer, that on the abrupt and unexpected termination of the campaign during the month of November last, the Secretary of War, who was then at Albany, directed General Wilkinson to consolidate all fragments of Regiments into entire Regiments for the winter, and to dispatch all officers not necessary to the command of these, on the recruiting service. Had this duty been neglected, an outcry would justly and generally have been raised against the government. As it is, they have done their duty, and it remains for the malcontents to say by what means, other than those adopted, it could have been done.

It has also been asked, why Captain Leonard, whose conduct and character had been represented as doubtful, should have been placed in command of Fort Niagara? To this question we are enabled to answer, that he was not placed there by the War Department; that this Department removed him from the command of this very post some months past and put in his room Maj. Armstead of the 3d Regt. of Artillery, and that he was reinstated without the knowledge of the Department. When Gen. Wilkinson left Fort George, he directed Col Scott (in case he also left it) to assign to the defence of Ft. Niagara two companies of Artillery, Leonard's and Reid's. Leonard being the elder officer commanded of course.

It has been said that Gen. Harrison was left without the orders necessary to regulate his conduct during the last campaign.

Every step taken by General Harrison was in express conformity to the orders given by the War Department. A plan of campaign, indicating route & means and object was given to him, commencing with his preparations, and ending with his departure from Sacket's Harbor on a visit to his family.-- These facts will soon appear officially, when will also appear the reasons why answers to Governor Shelby's letters (noticed in his late address to the Legislature of Kentucky) were not more promptly given. We understand that Gen. Harrison's orders to call out militia and volunteers to an extent that should make his whole force seven thousand men, were full and entire. Beyond this number, the government did not choose to go, and it has been seen that a much smaller one was competent to the object.

Not instructed by any general return made by Gen. Harrison of the amount of the force collected and collecting from points less distant than Kentucky, at the date of Gov. Shelby's letters, or at the time of their receipt, and not believing that the Department of War would be long left without such document, a pause--a necessary pause--was made on the part of the President in directing the reply which should be given to the letters of the Governor.

We have noticed these several subjects to prevent the progress of mistakes or misrepresentations in relation to them.