ll. My experience of my own people is that
once confidence is yielded to a person or party they are trustful to
an amazing degree; let that confidence once be disturbed, then
distrust and suspicion are quickly bred--and to anyone who knows the
Celtic psychology a suspicious Irishman is not a very pleasant person
to deal with. This the Party were to find out in suitable time.
Meanwhile the young men of the South saw no reason why, Ulster being
armed and insolent, they might not become armed and self-reliant. And
accordingly, without any petty distinctions of party, or class, or
creed, they decided to band themselves into a body of volunteers and
they adopted a title sanctioned in Irish history--namely, the Irish
Volunteers.

The movement was publicly inaugurated at a meeting held in the
Rotunda, Dublin, on 25th November 1913, the leading spirits in the
organisation being Captain White, D.S.O., and Sir Roger Casement, a
Northern Protestant who, knighted by England for his consular and
diplomatic services, was later to meet the death penalty at her hands
for his loyalty to his own country. The new body drew its supporters
from Parliamentarians, Sinn Feiners, Republicans and every other class
of Irish Nationalist. The manifesto it issued stated: "The object
proposed for the Irish Volunteers is to secure and maintain the rights
and liberties common to all the people of Ireland. Their duties will
be defensive and protective and they will not attempt either
aggression or domination. Their ranks are open to all able-bodied
Irishmen without distinction of creed, politics, or social grade." And
then it appealed "in the name of national unity, of national dignity,
of national and individual liberty, of manly citizenship to our
countrymen to recognise and accept without hesitation the opportunity
that has been granted to them to join the ranks of the Irish
Volunteers and to make the movement now begun not unworthy of the
historic title which it has adopted." The president of the Volunteers
was Professor John MacNeill, who had borne an honourable and
distinguished part in the Gaelic League Revival. They declared they
had nothing to fear from the Ulster Volunteers nor the Ulster
Volunteers from them. They acknowledged that the Northern body had
opened the way for a National Volunteer movement, but whilst at first
they were willing to cheer Sir Edward Carson because he had shown them
the way to arm, it was not long before they recogn