Joseph Pease and John Ellis denounced the Commission's final report to Parliament in 1895 as being the product of "misleading circulars, prescribed questions, suggestions in a particular direction, examination and filtration of evidence, and withholding of certain witnesses" in an "inversion of the ordinary rule to which we were accustomed in this country when it was desired to elicit the truth." Outside of Parliament, the British anti-opium movement was broadly sceptical of the Commission's objectivity, claiming that the limited terms of reference given to the Commissioners by Parliament and interference by the Raj's officials meant that the report was fatally biased. This critique has been echoed by some later historians, who agreed that the Commissioners were subject to undue interference as they investigated the opium question in India. Defenders of the status quo rallied in support of the Commission, with the Secretary of State for India, Henry Fowler, praising the report for its fairness in defending the everyday habits of Indians in the House of Commons. The medical journal The Lancet also responded positively to the report, asserting that it had dealt a "crushing blow to the anti-opium faddists." Indian political elites generally welcomed the report as defense against the financial losses and social instability that they feared a total ban on non-medical opium sales would bring to India. Public opinion among nationalists had long been mixed on the opium question with national finances and humanitarianism competing but generally supported the Raj against British reformers in the wake of the Royal Commission's report. Even Dadabhai Naoroji, who was generally an opponent of the opium trade and often an ally of the same British radicals who sought to ban opium, argued during the parliamentary debate in 1893 that began the Commission that investigating opium sales in India was a distraction from other more pressing issues. See also British Empire Royal Commission Further reading References Economic history of India Opium in India Opium in the United Kingdom History of opium 1895 in British India Opium History of mental health in the United Kingdom Opium