Editing Thomas Moore (section)

=== 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}}