ised that whilst
extending courtesy to Ulster, their supreme duty was the defence of
Irish liberty. For this they drilled and armed in quiet but firm
determination. When Partition became part of the policy of the Irish
Party, Mr Redmond and his friends had many warnings that the Irish
Volunteers were not in existence to support the mutilation of Ireland.
They proclaimed their intention originally of placing themselves at
the disposal of an Irish Parliament, but not of the kind contemplated
by the Home Rule Bill. The Irish Party saw in the Volunteers a
formidable menace to their power, if not to their continued existence.
They must either control them or suppress them. Mr Redmond demanded
the right to nominate a committee of twenty-five "true-blue"
supporters of his own policy. The Volunteer Committee had either to
declare war on Mr Redmond or submit to his demand. They submitted. The
Government, who were supposed to have instigated and inspired Mr
Redmond's demand, were satisfied. The reconstituted Committee called
the new body the National Volunteers.

But though the Redmondites got control of the Committee they did not
succeed in curbing the spirit of the Volunteers. And besides there was
in Dublin an independent body of Volunteers entitled the Citizen Army,
under the control of Messrs Connolly and Larkin. This was purely drawn
from the workers of the metropolis and was fiercely antagonistic to
the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which _The Irish Worker_
declared to be "the foulest growth that ever cursed this land," and
again as "a gang of place-hunters and political thugs."

It appears Mr Redmond's nominees gave little assistance in arming the
Volunteers, but the original members of the Committee got arms on
their own responsibility and, imitating the exploit of the
_Fanny_, they ran a cargo of rifles into Howth. The forces of the
Crown, which winked at the Larne gun-running, made themselves active
at Howth. The Volunteers were intercepted on their way back by a
military force, but succeeded in getting away with their rifles. The
soldiers, on returning to Dublin, irritated at their failure to get
the arms and provoked by a jeering crowd, fired on them, killing three
(including one woman) and wounding thirty-two. "It was," writes Mr
Robert Lynd, "Sir Edward Carson and Mr Bonar Law who introduced the
bloody rule of the revolver into modern Ireland and the first victims
were the Dublin citizens shot down in Bachelor's W