What then is the amount?  On the 23d of June, 1814, (it cannot be unfair to state as a fact, that a vacancy in the Representation of Westminster was at that time looked for,) Mr. B. either was, or wished to be, accounted an Advocate of Annual Parliaments and Suffrage to be enjoyed by all paying taxes; and on the 17th of February, 1817, when Mr. B. in another place is reminded of these, his avowed opinions, he is utterly mute upon the subject of Annual Parliaments, on the expediency of which he had before harangued at length, and confines himself to announce, as the sum of his then opinion, that suffrage should be co-extensive with direct taxation!  The question had two faces, and Mr. B. chooses only to look at one.  Hard pressed as he was, we cannot grant him this indulgence.  He has, indeed, denounced, on other occasions, the combined doctrines of Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage as chimerical and absurd; though how near he came to the point of recommending both, at the London Tavern, he is any thing but explicit; (in fact both, as Lord C. shewed, were virtually recommended by him.) But what does he think of Annual Parliaments, in conjunction with his rectified opinion of Suffrage, co-extensive with direct taxation?  Here he leaves us wholly in the dark; but if the turbulent workings of Mr. Brougham’s mind, and his fondness for contentious exhibition, manifested on all possible occasions, may be admitted as positive evidence, to corroborate the negative which his silence on this point implies, we are justified in believing that his passions were on that side, whatever might be the bent of his cooler judgment.  But this is of little import.

Introduce suffrage co-extensive with direct taxation, and Annual Parliaments must unavoidably follow.  The clumsy simplicity of the one arrangement would, in the eyes of its Admirers, match strikingly with the palpable expediency of the other.  Such a union is equally suitable to an age of gross barbarism and an age of false philosophy.  It is amusing to hear this plan of suffrage for all who pay direct taxes recommended as consonant to the genius and spirit of the British Constitution, when, in fact, though sufficiently rash and hazardous, it is no better than a timid plagiarism from the doctrine of the Rights of Man.  Upon the model of that system, it begins with flagrant injustice to chartered rights; for if it were adopted, the elective Franchises that now exist would be depreciated accordingly; an invidious process for those who would lose by the alteration; and still more invidious for those to whom the privilege would not be suffered to descend.  Alas!  I am trifling with the subject!  If the spirit of a People, composed as that of England now is, were once put into a ferment, by organizing a democracy on this scheme, and to this extent, with a Press as free and licentious as our’s has long been, what a flimsy barrier would remain to check the impetus of the excluded!  When, in thousands,