consistency!

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
n