Moore's work is about the famous Irish revolutionary Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was killed while resisting arrest on charges of treason near the end of the 18th century. From the preface: "With respect to Ireland, her situation at present is, in most respects, essentially different from that in which the crisis commemorated in these pages found her. Of the two great measures, Emancipation and Reform, the refusal of which was the sole cause of the...