Surely the Indians would guess that their query would eventually assemble.
This liberal offer and their refusal to accept it counteracted all the political capital they hoped to make out of the case; and public opinion was still more powerfully influenced in behalf of the president's action, by the pathos of the query which he propounded in one of his letters: "Must I shoot the simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?"
Adams, who thought the query unessential, did not reply, and Airy for some months took no steps to verify by telescopic search the results of the young mathematician's investigation.