Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Hicks Beach, Michael Edward
HICKS BEACH, Sir MICHAEL EDWARD, ninth baronet, and first Earl St. Aldwyn (1837–1916), statesman, born in Portugal Street, Grosvenor Square, London, 23 October 1837, was the elder son of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, eighth baronet, by his wife, Harriett Vittoria, second daughter of John Stratton, of Farthinghoe Lodge, Northamptonshire. Sir Michael Hicks [q.v.], secretary to William Cecil, first Baron Burghley, was an ancestor, and Baptist Hicks, first Viscount Campden [q.v.], a member of the family. Sir Michael Hicks's son, Sir William, was created a baronet by James I in 1619. The additional surname of Beach was assumed in 1790 by Lord St. Aldwyn's great-grandfather, Michael Hicks, younger son of the sixth baronet, in consequence of his marriage to Henrietta Maria, only surviving daughter and heiress of William Beach, of Netheravon, Wiltshire.
Michael Edward Hicks Beach was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, whence he matriculated in 1855. In 1858 he obtained a first class in the honour school of jurisprudence and modern history, graduating B.A. in the same year and proceeding M.A. in 1861. He was created an honorary D.C.L. in 1878. He succeeded as ninth baronet on his father's death in 1854, and in 1864 was returned to parliament in the conservative interest at a by-election as member for East Gloucestershire, a seat which his father had held in 1854 for a few months before his death, and which he himself retained until 1885. From 1885 until 1906, when he was raised to the peerage, he sat for West Bristol.
Hicks Beach's political ability early marked him out for office. In the last year (1868) of the Earl of Derby's ministry, he was appointed in February parliamentary secretary of the Poor Law Board, and in August under-secretary for the Home Department. After the resignation of the ministry in December he spent five years in opposition, but in 1874, when Mr. Disraeli became prime minister for the second time, he was appointed chief secretary for Ireland. In this office he showed a sympathy with reform which was not very much to the taste of the Irish tories, but he had the approval of Disraeli, who described him in 1874 as ‘a very able and rising man’ [Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Disraeli, v, 271] and in 1876 brought him into the Cabinet.
When the fourth Earl of Carnarvon resigned the office of colonial secretary in January 1878, in consequence of his disapproval of Disraeli's attitude towards the Eastern question, Hicks Beach, who had supported Disraeli's war policy throughout, succeeded him on 4 February. During his two years of office his chief pre-occupation was with South Africa. As Carnarvon's resignation was not directly connected with colonial questions, Hicks Beach naturally followed the general lines of his policy in South Africa and gave support to his chosen agent, Sir Bartle Frere [q.v.]. But Frere, who had been sent as governor to the Cape in 1877 with wide discretionary powers to carry out Carnarvon's policy of confederation as embodied in the South Africa Act of 1877, soon found his attention occupied by the movements of the Zulus, who were menacing Natal and the Transvaal border. In 1878 Frere became convinced that a settlement of the Zulu question was a necessary preliminary to the achievement of South African federation. When he visited Natal in September he became certain that a Zulu attack was imminent and that reinforcements should therefore be sent to Natal as speedily as possible. With this view Hicks Beach, after becoming colonial secretary, had on several occasions expressed himself in agreement. But in the meantime the prime minister was giving more attention to South African affairs than during Carnarvon's tenure of office, and by May 1878 he began to be dissatisfied with Carnarvon's policy and to be apprehensive of trouble [ibid., vi, 419]. By the autumn his alarm had increased [ibid., 420] and early in October, in view of the serious situation in the Balkans and Afghanistan, the government determined to limit, if possible, their commitments in South Africa. In consequence, in a dispatch dated 17 October, Hicks Beach informed Frere that the government were not prepared to send out troops, and that they had a confident hope that, by the exercise of prudence, peace with the Zulu chief, Cetywayo, could be preserved. The actual reasons for this reversal of policy—the situation in Afghanistan and the Near East—were not given in this dispatch, which Frere received on 10 November. In any case Frere considered that it was impossible at that time to avert a rupture by any concessions, and that to make the attempt would weaken British authority and almost inevitably lead to a Boer revolt in the Transvaal [Frere to Hicks Beach, 5 January 1879, Worsfold, Life of Frere, 139]. On 11 December 1878, therefore, he sent an ultimatum to Cetywayo, which made that chief decide to begin hostilities as soon as he was ready.
Two days later (13 December) Frere received a private letter from Hicks Beach in which the reasons influencing the Cabinet to refuse reinforcements were expressly stated. Although this letter reached Frere after he had sent the ultimatum, a summary of its contents, telegraphed from Cape Town by Lady Frere, had reached him on 30 November, and it is probable, though not certain, that the telegram included this statement. It is, therefore, unlikely that the omission from the official dispatch of the reasons determining the Cabinet had any effect on Frere's action. But it was unfortunate that the reasons were eventually given in a private letter, because it enabled the government to omit the statement of their motives and Frere's reply in justification of himself, when the official papers relating to the matter were published [Frere to Sir Robert Herbert, 23 December 1878, Martineau, Life of Frere, ii, 265; Frere to Hicks Beach, 5 January 1879, Worsfold, ibid.].
In the meantime, on 3 November, Hicks Beach explained to Disraeli that he could not control Frere without a telegraph line, that he did not know whether he could if he had one, and that ‘it is as likely as not that he is at war with the Zulus at the present moment and if his forces should prove inadequate … we shall be blamed for not supporting him’ [Monypenny and Buckle, vi. 421]. This statement convinced the Cabinet that reinforcements must be sent, but they directed that they should be for defence only [cf. Hicks Beach to Frere, 28 November 1878, Worsfold, 137]. Frere, probably with justice, considered that the only method of defending an exposed frontier two hundred miles long against greatly superior numbers was to take the initiative, and on 11 January 1879 the British commander, Lord Chelmsford, crossed the Tugela.
On 28 December 1878 Hicks Beach wrote to Frere taking exception to certain demands contained in the ultimatum on the ground that they had been made without reference home, and that Frere had hitherto made no mention of the necessity for ‘a final settlement with Cetywayo’. The latter assertion does not seem to be borne out by the earlier correspondence between Hicks Beach and Frere, which treats the Zulu danger as urgent [Worsfold, 68–72, 79, 91, 102–4, 115–16, 158–9], and it is clear that the actual position, with the Zulu forces partially mobilized near the frontier, was not one which could be indefinitely prolonged. Before the catastrophe at Isandhlwana (22 January 1879) Hicks Beach expected that Frere's policy would be successful and all would turn out for the best [Monypenny and Buckle, vi, 423], but the news of the Zulu victory greatly affected Disraeli and led the Cabinet to censure Frere. This censure was conveyed by Hicks Beach in a dispatch dated 19 March 1879 [ibid., 426]. At that time Frere was requested to continue in office, but in May his functions were restricted to Cape Colony and he was replaced as high commissioner for Natal, the Transvaal, and Zululand by Sir Garnet (afterwards Viscount) Wolseley in spite of Queen Victoria's strong disapproval [ibid., 429–33]. The part played by Hicks Beach in these arrangements was mainly official. There is little doubt that throughout he sympathized with Frere and was personally inclined to support him, but that after October 1878 the policy in South Africa was modified and largely controlled by Disraeli, who was apprehensive that the development of the South African situation might interfere with his other plans. The position was a difficult one for a young minister, who had only recently entered the Cabinet and owed much to Disraeli's high opinion of him.
During the second Gladstone ministry (1880–1885) Hicks Beach was in opposition, and devoted his attention chiefly to the subjects of local taxation and the land. On 12 May 1884 he attacked the government for their treatment of General Gordon, in a speech which made a great impression on the House of Commons and led Lord Randolph Churchill on the following day to indicate him as the future leader of the party in the House [Churchill, Life of Lord Randolph Churchill, 283–4, 310–12]. Outside parliament he exerted his influence to keep the conservative party united. After the Sheffield conference in July 1884, when a reconciliation was effected between the supporters of Lord Randolph Churchill and the Marquess of Salisbury, Hicks Beach, as a friend of both sections, was elected chairman of the council of the National Union. In October and November his conferences with the Marquess of Hartington [see Cavendish, Spencer Compton, eighth Duke of Devonshire] led to an agreement with regard to the general line of the Redistribution Bill, which facilitated the passage of the Franchise Bill through the House of Lords [Holland, Life of the Eighth Duke of Devonshire, ii, 54–8]. In 1885 he turned to finance, and on 8 June he moved and carried an amendment to the budget, which led to Gladstone's resignation.
When Lord Salisbury formed an administration in June 1885, Hicks Beach at first accepted the Colonial Office. But on learning that Lord Randolph Churchill refused to take office if Sir Stafford Northcote (afterwards first Earl of Iddesleigh) led the House of Commons, he withdrew his assent and thus assisted Churchill to force Northcote into the House of Lords [Churchill, 326–7, 336–9]. He became chancellor of the exchequer on 24 June and leader of the House of Commons. During his short tenure of office he displeased a section of his party by his refusal, in the Maamtrasna debate on 17 July, to make himself responsible for the coercive measures of Lord Spencer, the late lord-lieutenant of Ireland, without affording opportunity for judicial investigation in particular cases. His position was subsequently restated more strongly and more generally by Churchill, and several tory members were moved to protest [ibid., 353–7; Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, vol. 289, 1085].
The general election in November 1885 was followed by the resignation of Lord Salisbury's ministry on 28 January 1886, but in the five months' session which followed, Hicks Beach, as leader of the opposition, conducted the anti-Home Rule campaign to a victorious issue, manifesting, according to Lord Morley, remarkable skill and judgement [Life of Gladstone, iii. 338]. He himself, however, modestly considered that he was overshadowed by his colleague, Lord Randolph Churchill, and for this reason, when the new Salisbury ministry was formed in August, he insisted on making way for Churchill as chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons [Churchill, 527–8]. On Churchill's suggestion he was offered and accepted the position of Irish secretary, which he had held twelve years before, and which was at this time the most difficult position in the government. This appointment was not approved by the Ulstermen and the more extreme Unionists, who considered him to be too much in sympathy with the Irish point of view. What was more serious, Hicks Beach found that his views about Ireland and Irish landlords differed from those of Lord Salisbury, and he became apprehensive of being forced to administer Ireland too much on a landlords' rights basis [Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury, 22 August 1886, Churchill, 603]. Churchill's unexpected resignation in December 1886 deprived him of support in the Cabinet, from the meetings of which his Irish duties frequently compelled him to be absent [ibid., 605]. On 4 March 1887 he was compelled to resign office on account of an ‘acute affection of the eyes’ which several times threatened him with loss of sight. He was succeeded by Mr. Arthur (afterwards Earl of) Balfour. For some time he remained in the Cabinet without portfolio; then he withdrew, but re-entered on 21 February 1888 as president of the Board of Trade, an office which he continued to hold until the fall of Lord Salisbury's government in August 1892.
In 1895 Hicks Beach became for the second time chancellor of the exchequer, and retained office until 1902. His budgets were carefully worked out and clearly presented. The first years concluded a period of great prosperity, but beyond a reduction of the rates on agricultural land in 1896, a modification of the incidence of income tax on middle-class incomes in 1898, and an abatement of the duty on tobacco in the same year, little was done to relieve taxation. In 1899 the South African War began to affect national finance. By 1902 the income tax had risen from eightpence to one and threepence, and in that year Hicks Beach reimposed the shilling corn duty which Lowe had discontinued in 1869. It was abandoned in the following year by his successor, Mr. (afterwards Baron) Ritchie [q.v.]. Hicks Beach resigned office on Lord Salisbury's retirement in July 1902. He was entirely out of sympathy with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's movement in favour of ‘tariff reform’, and during the debates on Ritchie's budget he described himself as a ‘thorough-going free-trader’. During the next few years he conducted a strenuous campaign against protection and in favour of administrative economy, and by his efforts contributed to deter Mr. Balfour from committing the party to Mr. Chamberlain's programme. At the same time the decided character of his opinions prevented him from returning to office. In 1906 he was raised to the peerage with the title of Viscount St. Aldwyn, of Coln St. Aldwyn, Gloucestershire, and in 1915 he was created an earl. He died in London 30 April 1916, and was buried at Coln St. Aldwyn.
St. Aldwyn was twice married: first, in 1864 to Caroline Susan (died 1865), daughter of John Henry Elwes, of Colesbourne Park, Gloucestershire; and secondly, in 1874 to Lady Lucy Catherine, third daughter of Hugh Fortescue, third Earl Fortescue [q.v.]. By his second wife he had one son and three daughters. His son, Michael Hugh Hicks Beach, Viscount Quenington (1877–1916) predeceased him by a week, and he was succeeded as second earl by his grandson, Michael John Hicks Beach (born 1912).
St. Aldwyn was a reserved man with a vein of shyness, and he made few close political friends. The most notable of these were his early patron, Disraeli, and at a later time, Lord Randolph Churchill. In 1890 he strongly urged Lord Salisbury to readmit Churchill to office, and in 1895 Churchill's bust in the House of Commons was unveiled ‘by his oldest and truest political comrade, Sir Michael Hicks Beach’ [Churchill, 771, 820]. Although Churchill was entirely loyal to him it may be doubted whether the alliance was favourable to Hicks Beach's political fortunes, particularly in 1886. He has been described as ‘a thorough conservative of the old school’, but he had no toleration for established abuses, and was more sympathetic than the bulk of his party in his attitude towards Ireland. His inability to suffer fools gladly in public matters and his merciless logic in debate gained him a reputation for austerity of demeanour and asperity of temper which was on the whole undeserved. Goschen said of him ‘Beach is the only man I know who habitually thinks angrily’ [Sir Almeric Fitzroy, Memoirs, 623]. The nickname of ‘Black Michael’, applied to him by members in private conversation, found its way into Punch, and, according to Justin M'Carthy, the Irish members discovered a reference to him in Macaulay's line ‘The kites know well the long stern swell’. In private life St. Aldwyn was a land-owner, holding about four thousand acres, which he managed without an agent and kept in excellent order, while maintaining the happiest relations with his tenants. Both in public and private business he showed remarkable assiduity combined with high intellectual qualities, and it was on this that his position in the House of Commons was based.
A three-quarter length portrait of St. Aldwyn, standing at the table of the House of Lords, was painted by Sir A. S. Cope, R.A., in 1906 (Royal Academy Pictures, 1906).
[The Times, 1 and 5 May 1916; Mrs. William Hicks Beach, A Cotswold Family, 1909; W. F. Monypenny and G. E. Buckle, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, vols. v, vi, 1920; J. Martineau, Life of Sir Bartle Frere, 1895; W. B. Worsfold, Life of Sir Bartle Frere, 1923; W. S. Churchill, Lord Randolph Churchill, 2nd. ed. 1907; Lord Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. iii, 1903; Lord E. Fitzmaurice, Life of the Second Earl Granville, vol. ii, 1905; B. H. Holland, Life of the Eighth Duke of Devonshire, 1911; Hansard, Parliamentary Debates; Henry Lucy, Diaries of Parliament, 1885–1905, and Memories of Eight Parliaments, 1908; Lord George Hamilton, Parliamentary Reminiscences, 1917; Quarterly Review, July 1885, January and July 1887; Hon. A. R. G. Elliot, Life of the First Viscount Goschen, 1911; Justin M'Carthy, British Political Portraits, Number Six, 1903; Sir Almeric Fitzroy, Memoirs, 1925; Sir A. H. Hardinge, Life of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1925.]