Editing Thomas Moore (section)

===The lampooning of Castlereagh===
[[File:Bloody Castlereagh (2).png|175px|thumb|right|Bloody Castlereagh, 1798]]Another, and possibly more personal, target for Moore was the [[Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs|Foreign Secretary]] [[Lord Castlereagh]]. A reform-minded [[Ulster]] [[Presbyterian Church in Ireland|Presbyterian]] turned Anglican [[Tories (British political party)|Tory]], as [[Chief Secretary for Ireland|Irish Secretary]] Castlereagh had been ruthless in the suppression of the United Irishmen and in pushing the [[Acts of Union 1800|Act of Union]] through the [[Parliament of Ireland|Irish Parliament]]. 

In what were the "verbal equivalents of the political cartoons of the day",<ref name="Poetry Foundation" /> ''Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress'' (1818), ''[https://verse.press/poem/to-the-ship-in-which-lord-castlereagh-sailed-for-31871 To the Ship in Which Lord Castlereagh Sailed to the Continent]'' (1818) and ''[[iarchive:fablesforholyal00moor/page/n15/mode/2up|Fables for the Holy Alliance]]'' (1823), Moore lampoons Castlereagh's deference to the reactionary interests of Britain's continental allies.<ref name=":6" />{{rp|332-337}} At the [[Congress of Vienna]], the Foreign Secretary had signed "away the Rights of Man/ To Russian threats and Austrian juggle" and, content with but a [https://opil.ouplaw.com/page/498 declaration against the slave trade], had left "the sinking African/ To fall without one saving struggle--".<ref>{{Cite web |title=To The Ship In Which Lord Castlereagh Sailed For The Continent |url=https://verse.press/poem/to-the-ship-in-which-lord-castlereagh-sailed-for-31871 |access-date=2025-05-02 |website=verse.press}}</ref>

Widely read, so that Moore eventually produced a sequel, was the verse novel ''[[The Fudge Family in Paris]]'' (1818). The family of an Irishman working as a propagandist for Castlereagh in Paris, the Fudges are accompanied by an accomplished tutor and classicist, Phelim Connor. An upright but disillusioned Irish Catholic, his letters to a friend reflect Moore's own views.

Connor's regular epistolary denunciations of Castlereagh have two recurrent themes. The first is Castlereagh as "the embodiment of the sickness with which Ireland had infected British politics as a consequence of the union":<ref name="Bew 2011">{{cite book |last1=Bew |first1=John |title=Castlereagh: Enlightenment, War and Tyranny |date=2011 |publisher=Quercas |location=London |isbn=978-0-85738-186-6 |pages=530–531}}</ref> "We sent thee Castlereagh – as heaps of dead Have slain their slayers by the pest they spread". The second is that at the time of the Acts of Union Castlereagh's support for Catholic emancipation had been disingenuous. Castlereagh had been master of "that faithless craft", which can "court the slave, can swear he shall be freed", but then "basely spurns him" when his "point is gain'd".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Moore |first1=Thomas |title=The Fudge Family in Paris |date=1818 |publisher=Longmans |location=London |pages=69, 76}}</ref>

Through a mutual connection, Moore learned that Castlereagh had been particularly stung by the verses of the Tutor in the ''Fudge Family.''<ref name="Bew 2011" /> For openly casting the same dispersions against the former Chief Secretary—that he bloodied his hands in 1798 and deliberately deceived Catholics at the time of the Union—in 1811 the London-based Irish publisher, and former United Irishman, [[Peter Finnerty]] was sentenced to eighteen months for libel.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Peter Finnerty – Irish Biography|url=https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/PeterFinnerty.php|access-date=27 March 2021|website=www.libraryireland.com}}</ref>