st middle age; and of the
whole twenty-five Willie Redmond alone subsequently bore arms.

There was indeed an underlying difference of principle. Redmond knew
well, and all parliamentarians with him, that under the terms of the
Home Rule Bill no army could be raised or maintained in Ireland without
the consent of the Imperial Parliament. The original Volunteer Committee
laid it down as an axiom that the Volunteer Force should be permanent;
they were, as Casement put it, "the beginning of an Irish army." Sir
Edward Carson's policy had produced a new mentality among Irish
Nationalists, and it made many take Redmond's constitutionalism for
timidity.

But in the eyes of the world and of Ireland generally, Redmond was just
as much as Sir Edward Carson the accredited and accepted leader of his
Volunteer organization, and to him the Volunteers looked for provision
of arms and equipment. One of his chief preoccupations in those months
was with this matter, and it explains his desire to have the
proclamation against the import of arms withdrawn. The Larne exploit had
proved the futility of it; articles by Colonel Repington in _The Times_
testified to the completeness of the provision which had been made for
Ulster. But smuggling is always a costly business, and Nationalists were
hampered by the cost. More than that, there was ground for suspicion
that the scales were not equally weighted as between Ulster and the rest
of the country. On June 30th Redmond wrote a letter to the Chief
Secretary repeating his case for withdrawal of the proclamation. It is
all memorable, but especially the warning which concludes the following
passages from it:

"In the South and West of Ireland, not only are the most active measures
being taken against the importation of arms, but many owners of vessels
are harassed unnecessarily.

"The effect of this unequal working of the proclamation has been grave
amongst our people, and has tended to increase both their exasperation
and their apprehensions.

"The apprehensions of our people are justified to the fullest. They find
themselves, especially in the North, faced by a large, drilled,
organized and armed body. Furthermore, the incident at the Curragh has
given them the fixed idea that they cannot rely on the Army for
protection. The possession of arms by Nationalists would, under these
circumstances, be no provocation for disorder, but a means of preserving
the peace by confronting one armed force