The crusaders had underestimated the parliamentary skill of Mr. Gladstone. He promptly moved a counter resolution, proposing that "this House press on the Government of India to continue their policy 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.