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 conspiracy here recorded, one has already been granted, and with that free grace which adds lustre even to justice, while the other is now in...