But though prostrate, despairing and depleted Ireland still claimed her rights, though for a few years it seemed as if they had been tacitly waived. The Repeal agitation died, and its place was taken by the Irish Tenant League which aimed not at interference with constitutional arrangements but at the solution of the land question, not in the radical method advocated by Lalor but by legislation securing certain rights to the tenant, the claim of the landlord to be owner of the land being left untouched. Lalor had foretold that on the land question Ulster instead of being "on the flank" of the rest of Ireland would march with it side by side: and Gavan Duffy in his League of the North and South went some length in the way of securing the co-operation of the Northern Tenant Righters. At the same time the Irish representatives in Parliament formed the beginning of an Independent Parliamentary Party, holding aloof from any binding alliance with either English Party but combining at need with the party most favourable at the moment to Irish claims. But the new policy proved a failure within three years, partly by the treachery of members of the party, but chiefly through the inherent hopelessness of the position of any Irish party then in Parliament. Besides, the Tenant League had to contend with the masterful personality of Cardinal Cullen, an ecclesiastic of the Ultramontane School, who spent his life in the endeavour, temporarily successful, to throw the whole weight of his Church against the just claims of the nation.