SIR M. HICKS-BEACH.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1309, 30 May 1878, Page 3

SIR M. HICKS-BEACH.

We extract from " May Fair" the following sketch of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, the new Colonial Secretary : —" We have left to the last one other of Air Dieraeli's young men. We have done so not because we think least of the prospects of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, but because we believe most. Mr Disraeli did not, as in other cases, adopt an untrained official when, in 1874, he offered Sir Michael Hicks-Beach the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland. The young Gloucestershire baronet had been Parliamentary Secretary to the Poor Law Board during that brief gleam of conservative ascendency which preceded the great wave of Liberal enthusiasm that placed Mr Gladstone in an apparently impregnable position. He had neither tinio nor opportunity to show his mettle in 18G8. But as Chief Secretary for Ireland he has had opportunities of which he has fully availed himself. There is, perhaps, no post in the Cabinet, save that of Home Secretary, which entails more difficulties than does that of the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland. It requires in him who would successfully hold it a combination of tact, firmness, administrative ability, and intimate acquaintance with details. In all these points Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, having been sorely tried, has not been found wanting. His patience under the peculiarly trying circumstances of the session of 1876 and 1877 was something very little short of superhuman. Never was a man s_o sorely tried 5 and, though it caiinot be said that af'tsr repeated rebuffs Sir Michael. Hicks-Beach always came up smiling, he at lea»t maintained the imperturbability of his temper. If he has sometimes permitted himself to show a withering scorn for ignorance, malice, and lack of ingenuousness, that can scarcely be regarded as a fault. The new Colonial Secretary is, as Mr Jenkins might say, a man with a backbone. He is a thoroughly capable man, with a great appetite for steady labour, a "singular gift for assimilating facts, and, withal, a power of expression which ho.s greatly improved within the last three years, and contains within it the possibility of further development. There i 3 a wholesome axiom in the '' Biglow Papers," which cautions us against prophesying " onless we know." In the face of such warning, wo have no hesitation in placing on record our personal belief that in Sir Michael Hicks Beach the Conservative party have their coming man, and that in due course he will lead wiiere he is now content to follow. For a man of the comparatively youthful ago of 40, it is no [small thing to be Colonial Secretary and a Cabinet Minister. But thoro are yet higher posts, and we believe that, as his family motto, in defiance alike of ','hy fickleness of fate and the T-lsa oi grammar, proclaims, Sir Michael HicW'Beaoh will have Tout on ton