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. He absolves Fitzgerald of recklessness: but for a contrary wind, decisive French assistance would have been delivered by General Hoche at Bantry in December 1796. In his own "Memoirs", Moore acknowledges his "Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald" (1831) as a "justification of the men of '98 – the "ultimi Romanorum" of our country".