Editing Thomas Moore (section)

== On Reform and Repeal ==

=== Parliamentary reform ===
In his journal, Moore confessed that he "agreed with the Tories in their opinion" as to the consequences of the first [[Reform Act 1832|Parliamentary Reform Act (1832)]]. He believed it would give "an opening and impulse to the revolutionary feeling now abroad" [England, Moore suggested, had been "in the stream of a revolution for some years"] and that the "temporary satisfaction" it might produce would be but as the calm before a storm: "a downward reform (as [[John Dryden|Dryden]] says) rolls on fast".<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|234-237}} But this was a prospect he embraced. In conversation with the Whig grandee [[Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne|Lord Lansdowne]], he argued that while the consequences might be "disagreeable" for many of their friends, "We have now come to that point which all highly civilised countries reach when wealth and all the advantages that attend it are so unequally distributed that the whole is in an unnatural position: and nothing short of a general routing up can remedy the evil."<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|236}}

Despite their initially greater opposition to reform, Moore predicted that the Tories would prove themselves better equipped to ride out this "general routing". With the young [[Benjamin Disraeli]] (who was to be the author of the [[Reform Act 1867|Second Reform Act]] in 1867) Moore agreed that since the [[Glorious Revolution]] first led them to court an alliance with the people against the aristocracy, the Tories had taken "a more democratic line". For Moore this was evidenced by the prime-ministerial careers of [[George Canning]] and [[Robert Peel]]: "mere commoners by birth could never have attained the same high station among the Whig party"..<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|251-252}}

===O'Connell and Repeal===
In 1832, Moore declined a voter petition from [[Limerick]] to stand for the [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Westminster Parliament]] as a [[Repeal Association|Repeal]] candidate. When [[Daniel O'Connell]] took this as evidence of Moore's "lukewarmness in the cause of Ireland", Moore recalled O'Connell's praise for the "treasonous truths" of his book on Fitzgerald..<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|248}} The difficulty, Moore suggested, was that these "truths" did not permit him to pretend with O'Connell that reversing the Acts of Union would amount to something less than real and lasting separation from Great Britain. Relations had been difficult enough after the old Irish Parliament had secured its [[Constitution of 1782|legislative independence from London in 1782]]. But with a Catholic Parliament in Dublin, "which they would be sure to have out and out", the British government would be continually at odds, first over the disposal of [[Church of Ireland]] and [[Absentee landlord|absentee]] property, and then over what would be perennial issues of trade, foreign treaties and war.<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|241-242}}

So "hopeless appeared the fate of Ireland under English government, whether of Whigs or Tories", that Moore declared himself willing to "run the risk of Repeal, even with separation as its too certain consequence".<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|241-242}} But with Lord Fitzgerald, Moore believed independence possible only in union with the "Dissenters" (the Presbyterians) of the north (and possibly then, again only with a prospect of French intervention). To make "headway against England" the "feeling" of Catholics and Dissenters had first to be "nationalised". This is something Moore thought might be achieved by fixing upon the immediate abuses of the (Anglican and landed) "Irish establishment". As he had O'Connell's uncompromising stance on the Veto, Moore regarded O'Connell's campaign for Repeal as unhelpful or, at best, "premature".<ref name="Moore, Political and Historical Writings" />{{rp|233}}

This perspective was shared by some of O'Connell's younger lieutenants, dissidents with the [[Repeal Association]]. [[Young Ireland]]er [[Charles Gavan Duffy (Australian politician)|Charles Gavan Duffy]] sought to build a "[[Tenant Right League|League of North and South]]"<ref>{{Cite book |title=The League of North and South |last=Duffy |first=Charles Gavan |publisher=Chapman & Hall |year=1886 |location=London}}</ref> around what [[Michael Davitt]] (of the later [[Land League]]) described as "the programme of the Whiteboys and Ribbonmen reduced to moral and constitutional standards"—tenant rights and land reform.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The fall of feudalism in Ireland; or, The story of the land league revolution |last=Davitt |first=Michael|publisher=Dalcassian Publishing Company |year=1904|location=London|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bqTIDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA70|pages=70}}</ref>