In 1799, in Philadelphia, Thomas Ledlie Birch published his "Letter from An Irish Emigrant" (1799) which maintained that the United Irish had been "goaded" into insurrection by "rapines, burnings, rapes, murders, and other sheddings of blood". But, in Ireland the first public rehabilitation came in 1831 with "The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald" (1831), described by the author, Ireland's national bard, Thomas Moore as a "justification of the men of '98--the "ultimi Romanorum" of our country". In 1832 Moore declined a voter petition to stand as a Repeal candidate. He could not pretend with O'Connell that the consequence of Repeal would be less than a real separation from Great Britain, something possible only if Catholics were again "joined by dissenters".