it said, was no ungrounded observation. Yet at the same time the very
success of the Volunteer movement was disquieting Redmond. He was not in
the same position as Sir Edward Carson, who from the first had directed,
presided over, and controlled the raising and equipment of his force;
and unless the force were to be a menace to his leadership, he must
secure control. As Mr. Bulmer Hobson puts it in his _History of the
Irish Volunteers_:

"The Volunteers had men in their ranks who were political followers of
Mr. Redmond's, and men who were not, and who never had been. The latter
were willing to help him if he had been ready to help them; they would
have made terms with him, but were not prepared to be merely absorbed
into his movement."

The strength of Redmond's position lay in the fact that the vast
majority of the enrolled men looked to him as their leader: his
weakness, in that the committees under which enrolment had taken place
were largely composed of the extremist section. He now determined to
unite the Volunteers with the parliamentary party as the Ulster
Volunteers were linked with Sir Edward Carson and his civilian
organization.

The men with whom he had to deal were principally Professor MacNeill and
Sir Roger Casement. His first proposal was to replace the existing
Provisional Committee by another, consisting of nine members, with
Professor MacNeill, who was regarded as a general supporter of
Redmond's, in the chair. Oddly enough, the negotiations broke down
because Redmond nominated Michael Davitt's son along with Mr. Devlin and
his own brother to be representatives. The young Davitt had at an early
stage expressed dissent from the movement, and this, coming from his