The Melbourne Ministry fell in 1841. O’Connell had kept the Government in office for five years. During that time they had passed useful measures for England; but in their Irish legislation they failed utterly. The Tithe Act was a sham, the Poor Law, passed in the teeth of Irish Opposition, was detested in Ireland, and the Municipal Reform Act has well been described by Sir Erskine May “as virtually a scheme of municipal disfranchisement.” When all was over, O’Connell said: “The experiment which I have tried has proved that an English Parliament cannot do justice to Ireland, and our only hope now is in the Repeal of the Union.” He then unfurled the banner of repeal, and threw himself heart and soul into the movement. IV While the Melbourne Ministry failed utterly in their Irish legislation, the administration of the country by Thomas Drummond (Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, 1835-1840) was eminently successful. Though there were Coercion Acts on the Statute book they were not enforced. Drummond governed according to the ordinary law, and, by meting out even-handed justice to all, won popular support and confidence. However, on the fall of the Ministry, coercion again soon became the order of the day—thus: 1843-1845. Arms Act. 1847. Crime and Outrage Act. 1848-1849. Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, Crime and Outrage Act, Removal of Aliens Act. Between 1842 and 1845 Ireland rang with the demand for repeal. Great meetings—monster meetings they were called—were held everywhere; and O’Connell, by a series of the most eloquent and vehement speeches ever addressed to public audiences, re-awakened the spirit of nationality and intensified the popular hatred of England. In the days of the Melbourne Ministry his policy was a policy of peace; but the English people would not accept the olive branch. His policy now was a policy of war. His case for repeal rested on two main propositions: “(1) Ireland was fit for legislative independence in position, population, and natural advantages. Five independent kingdoms in Europe possessed less territory or people; and her station in the Atlantic, between the old world and the new, designed her to be the _entrepôt_ of both, if the watchful jealousy of England had not rendered her natural advantages nugatory. “(2) She was entitled to legislative independence; the Parliament of Ireland was as ancient as the Parliament of England, and had not derived its existence from any Charter of the British Crown, but sprang out of the natural rights of freedom. Its independence, long claimed, was finally recognised and confirmed by solemn compact between the two nations in 1782; that compact has since been shamefully violated, indeed, but no statute of limitation ran against the right of a nation.”(152)