Whatever its importance for theory, the Enquiry was a major event in economics in Australia. In instituting the Enquiry, the Prime Minister had chosen economists to investigate a topic of controversy, and had included three professors in economics and the President of the new Economic Society. ‘Practical men’ (that is, men who were only practical) were excluded. It may be described as economists’ first prominent step on the stage of public life in Australia. And for our authors it was their first prominent step on the stage of public life, in Australia and internationally. Further, the Enquiry was not a preliminary essay or an aside. The 232-page Enquiry was a work of intensive joint authorship that was intended to serve as an exhibit of good economics. The Enquiry certainly served Copland and Giblin’s active concern to advance professionalised economics within Australian life.
They saw the Tariff Report as a showcase for economists’ wares, and therefore decided to produce as a far as possible, a non-apologetic consensus document.[14] (Harper 1989, p. 9).
The Enquiry remains an anomalous and curious event. It is so because of the heterodoxical character of its thesis: that tariffs promote living standards. The Enquiry had been an opportunity for the newly professionalised economists to voice a rejection of protectionism, as their worthy economist forebears had almost always done. Instead, they supplied a ‘comprehensive manifesto for moderate protectionism’ (Glezer 1982, p. 11). They declined the participation of the Sydney economist R. C. Mills (1886–1952) in the Enquiry on account of his inclination to free trade. And in advancing the case, Brigden did battle with a free trade partisan, the young F. C. Benham, then at Sydney University (see Benham 1926). Whereas Benham subjected the Tariff Board to ridicule, Brigden believed the Board could be reformed, and made a worthy institution within the Commonwealth. It is ironically illustrative of the anti-liberalism of this approach to economics that, at the beginning of the Great Depression, the most forward adversaries of protection in the Australian academy were an Englishman (Benham) and a historian (W. K. Hancock).[15]
It is true that to voice a biting rejection of protectionism would not have been popular. The Enquiry is more a politic than impolitic document. It is never strident, lecturing or tactless; it is never ‘unrealistic’ or visionary; grim or alarming. This is not to say it was complaisant; its trouncing of Imperial Preference disproves any eagerness to gratify Bruce.[16] Neither was it daunted, or dissimulating. But the Enquiry was reconciled to what it considered to be political realities. As Copland said:
It was the political difficulty of raising the subsidies by taxation that inclined the committee to the view that in practice the same result could not have been achieved that way. (Copland 1931b, p. 20)
It can be debated whether this attitude amounts to ‘political economy’ or ‘politic economy’. But the Enquiry saw little hope in ‘political difficulties’ being altered by it adopting an educational role regarding the tariff. Courtesy would be more useful than correction.
This care to evade political difficulties produced a report which managed a compromise. Protection should not be reduced (a victory for the protectionists), and it should not be increased (a victory for the free traders). Copland complained: ‘I suppose it will be considered an attempt to be all things to all men’ (quoted in Harper 1989, p. 9). And in some measure it was: both the protectionist Age, and the free-trade Argus welcomed the report.