But it was in Ireland itself that Moore found himself fêted and honoured with a kind of welcome such as seldom has been accorded to any man of letters. In 1830, the research for reminiscences of Lord Edward Fitzgerald gave him a reason to cross to Dublin for a long visit, and take his wife and boys to see his mother. Here, for the first and only time, Moore made a public appearance before a gathering of his countrymen assembled for a political purpose. A meeting had been called to celebrate the recent Revolution in France, and the poet was set down to second one of the resolutions. Eloquence was one of his accomplishments, and he appears to have enjoyed the excitement of feeling that "every word told on his auditory," who overwhelmed him with applause. The meeting had special significance, as marking a definite political connection, which the character of his book on Lord Edward only emphasised when it came to be published. He had been brought into close touch with the leading Repealers, and expressed a general approbation of their objects--though he thought O'Connell's agitation for Repeal both premature and ill-judged. He was, in truth, hardly more in complete sympathy with the Irish leader than with his Whig friends, who seemed to display in office (which they now held) all the qualities which he had disliked in their predecessors. In Ireland, however, there was every disposition to minimise differences of opinion, and the public enthusiasm for his character and achievements expressed itself, in 1832, by an effort to induce him to enter Parliament. Moore replied with a refusal, on the ground that his means were narrow and precarious, and that he could not spare the time; as indeed he might well say, for in this year he had been forced, not only to accept Marryat's offer of £500 for contributions to a magazine, but even to borrow (for the second time in his life) from a friend, Rogers. Curiously enough, a second proposal of the same kind came to him from a very different quarter. Lord Anglesey, then Viceroy, conveyed through a third person his wish that Moore should stand for Dublin University, and promised him all the Government support. In declining this offer on the same grounds as he had alleged to the Limerick electors, Moore added a very plain statement that, with the views he entertained, he could not enter parliament under the sanction of that Government. The Whigs had resorted to coercion, and "As long," he wrote, "as the principle on which Ireland is at present governed shall continue to be acted on, I can never consent to couple my name, humble as it is, with theirs."