We have been led into this train of thought by a perusal of the speeches lately delivered at Manchester on the subject of our national defences. The question is one of undoubted interest to us all, and it is well that it should be brought forward and thoroughly discussed in time. If there is danger, either immediate or impending, let us know it, and then, to a certain extent, we shall be forwarned if not forearmed. The Duke of Wellington--a tolerable military authority, as times go--has already given us his opinion on the point, and that opinion has been immediately met and contradicted by the sapient Mr Richard Cobden. We have yet to learn the exact amount of Mr Cobden's attainments in the arts of strategy and fortification; but as he is undoubtedly a "myriad-minded" gentleman, of fair average conceit, and more than average effrontery, and as we have hitherto abstained from making special mention of him in our columns, it may, perhaps, be worth while to see how he has acquitted himself in the lists against the veteran conqueror of Napoleon. Our old friend Tomkins--he of the Ten Tumblers--used to be, if we recollect aright, rather eloquent upon this weighty topic. Tomkins, in early life, had sustained an amatory disappointment, in competition with a thwacking drum-major; and therefore always looked upon the army with somewhat of a jaundiced eye. The sound of the fife, clarion, and trumpet was ever after distasteful to his ear; and he never trotted his mare past a marching regiment of these scarlet locusts, without a spasm of righteous indignation. "They eat our bread, sir!" he would say, "and drink of our cup, and do absolutely nothing in return. The sooner we get rid of them the better. An Englishman, sir, needs no hired supernumeraries to protect his home. When was our soil ever invaded? Let the French come, and we will give them graves!" And having delivered himself of this sublime sentiment, Tomkins would incontinently ring for another tumbler. It always struck us, however, as a singular proof of the eccentricities or rather inconsistencies of genius, that our distinguished friend, when in his cups, and towards the close of the evening, invariably began to glorify himself upon his length of lineage and descent. In support of these heraldic claims, he was wont to cite the case of his great progenitor, "the founder of the family," who just about a century ago had the condescension to hold the stirrup of Lord George Murray, as he alighted from his horse when the clans marched into Derby. Tomkins, on the strength of this anecdote, had rather a kindly feeling towards the Jacobites, and would never allow that the enterprise had at any time the character of an invasion. "We were ready, sir," he would exclaim, "to have marched up, in the Reform year, from Birmingham to London; and who can doubt that, had we done so, we should have driven the household troops before us as the chaff flies out from the fanners?"