League Endorsed
The United Irish League’s campaign for nationalist unity received an important endorsement from parliamentary representatives gathered at Dublin’s Mansion House on 17 January. By appearing together and advancing negotiations for reunion, members of the rival nationalist factions acknowledged the popular demand that had grown around the League since its establishment by William O’Brien in 1898. The organisation had begun chiefly as a campaign for land reform and the enlargement of uneconomic holdings, but its branches increasingly called upon politicians to end the quarrels created by the fall of Charles Stewart Parnell and restore a united parliamentary movement.