olicy of greatly diminishing
the cultivation of the poppy and the production and sale of opium, and
demanding a Royal Commission to report as to (1) Whether the growth of the
poppy and the manufacture and sale of opium in British India should be
prohibited.... (4) The effect on the finances of India of the prohibition
... taking into consideration (a) the amount of compensation payable; (b)
the cost of the necessary preventive measures; (c) the loss of revenue....
(5) The disposition of the people of India in regard to (a) the use of
opium for non-medical purposes; (b) their willingness to bear in whole or
in part the cost of prohibitive measures."

Mr. Gladstone's resolution looked, to the unthinking, like an anti-opium
document. He doubtless meant that it should, for in his task of
maintaining the opium traffic he had to work through an anti-opium
majority. Mr. Webb's resolution, starting from the assumption that the
government was committed to suppressing the traffic, called for a
commission merely to arrange the necessary details. Mr. Gladstone's
resolution raised the whole question again, and instructed the commission
not only to call particular attention to the cost of prohibition (the
shrewd premier knew his public!), not only to find out if the victims of
opium in India wished to continue the habit, but also threw the whole
burden of cost on the poverty-stricken people of India--which he knew
perfectly well they could not bear. The original resolution had sprung
out of a moral outcry against the China trade. Mr. Gladstone, in beginning
again at the beginning, ignored the China trade and the effects of opium
on the Chinese.

But more interesting, if less significant than this attitude, was the
suggestion that the Indian government "continue their policy of greatly
diminishing the cultivation of the poppy." Now this suggestion conveyed an
impression that was either true or false. Either the Indian government was
putting down opium or it was not. In either event, if Mr. Gladstone was
not fully informed, it was his own fault, for the machinery of government
was in his hands. The best way to straighten out this tangle would seem to
be to consult the report of Mr. Gladstone's commission. This commission,
on its arrival in India, found no trace of a policy of suppressing the
trade. Sir David Balfour, the head of the Indian Finance Department, said
to the commission: "I was not aware that that was the policy of the Home