Nearly all of the latter--selected for their "proved judgment and steadiness"-- were men past 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in those months was with this matter, and it explains his desire to have the proclamation against the import of arms withdrawn.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.