Rotunda’s First Oireachtas
Irish self-government was not close in 1897. The second Home Rule Bill had been rejected by the House of Lords in 1893, and the Conservative and Liberal Unionist administration returned in 1895 showed no intention of reviving it. The Irish Parliamentary Party was still weakened by the division that followed Charles Stewart Parnell’s fall and death earlier in the decade. Its rival factions continued to send MPs to Westminster, but no longer possessed the disciplined authority which had made Parnell’s party such a formidable force.