Editing Thomas Moore (section)

===Sheridan, Fitzgerald and ''The History of Ireland''===
In 1825, Moore's ''[[Memoirs of the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan]]'' was finally published after nine years of work on and off. It proved popular, went through a number of editions, and helped establish Moore's reputation among literary critics. The work had a political aspect: Sheridan was not only a playwright, he was a Whig politician and a friend of [[Charles James Fox|Fox]]. Moore judged Sheridan an uncertain friend of reform. But he has Sheridan articulate in his own words a good part of what was to be the United Irish case for separation from England.

Writing in 1784 to his brother, Sheridan explains that the "subordinate situation [of Ireland] prevents the formation of any party among us, like those you have in England, composed of person acting upon certain principles, and pledged to support each other". Without the prospect of obtaining power – which in Ireland is "lodged in a branch of the English government" (the Dublin Castle executive) – there is little point in the members of parliament, no matter how personally disinterested, collaborating for any public purpose. Without an accountable executive the interests of the nation are systematically neglected.<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|81-82}}

It is against this, the truncated state of politics in Ireland, that Moore sees [[Lord Edward Fitzgerald]], a "Protestant reformer" who wished for "a democratic [[House of Commons]] and the Emancipation of his Catholic countrymen", driven toward the republican separatism of the [[United Irishmen]].<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|132-134}} He absolves Fitzgerald of recklessness: but for a contrary wind, decisive French assistance would have been delivered by [[Lazare Hoche|General Hoche]] at [[Bantry]] in December 1796.<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|153-154}} In his own ''Memoirs'', Moore acknowledges his ''Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald'' (1831) as a "justification of the [[Irish Rebellion of 1798|men of '98]] – the ''ultimi Romanorum'' of our country".<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|248}}

Moore's ''History of Ireland'', published in four volumes between 1835 and 1846, reads as a further and extended indictment of English rule. It was an enormous work (consulted by [[Karl Marx]] in his extensive notes on Irish history),<ref>Karl Marx (1869), "Notes on Irish History" (1869), [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/ireland/ireland.pdf ''Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question,''] New York, International Publishers, 1972, pp. 316, 360.</ref> but not a critical success. Moore acknowledged scholarly failings, some of which stemmed from his inability to read documentary sources in Irish.<ref name="Harry White" />