and Parliament approved the appointment of a Royal Commission on Opium. The terms of reference for the Royal Commission initially proposed by Alfred Webb, a Quaker MP, assumed the question of whether the drug should be prohibited at all was already settled. He intended the Royal Commission to examine how best the losses of the end of the opium trade could be managed by the Government of India. However, Gladstone shifted the focus of the Royal Commission with an amendment to remove the assertion that the need to abolish the trade had been already established in 1891 and to shift the focus of the Commission to consumption within India. The final terms of reference given to the Commission by Parliament was: After an extended inquiry the Royal Commission released its report, running to around two thousand pages, in early 1895. The report firmly rejected the claims made by the anti-opiumists in regard to the harm wrought to India by this traffic. Instead, it claimed that opium use in Asia was analogous to alcohol use in Europe, that opium was not harmful to Asians, and that Chinese complaints were based on commercial concerns, not medical evidence. This proved to be an unexpected and devastating blow to the hopes of the anti-opium reformers in Britain. The Commission's conclusions effectively removed the opium question from the British public agenda for another 15 years. One member of the Commission, Henry J. Wilson, published a Minute of Dissent. Membership Queen Victoria appointed nine members to the Royal Commission on Opium. These consisted of seven British and two Indian members headed by Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl Brassey, who served as chairman. Those appointed were accomplished, prominent public men who had to have sufficient resources to serve without pay on the commission for a considerable period of time. All those appointed were experienced at sifting through complex issues and coming to reasonable conclusions based on evidence presented to them. The Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade commented in its journal that after attending the early hearing in London, "the commission is as fair-minded and impartial a tribunal as could have desired to hear our case." Chairman: Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl Brassey, (1836–1918) was the son of Thomas Brassey, the railway contractor of Cheshire. Brassey had an extended career as a Liberal Member of the Parliament. He was a prolific author best known for his Brassey's