page_title: Michael Hicks Beach, 1st Earl St Aldwyn
section_title: Political career, 1888–1902
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Hicks Beach, 1st Earl St Aldwyn / Political career, 1888–1902
caption_attribution_description: Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour; Michael Edward Hicks Beach, 1st Earl St Aldwyn; Joseph ('Joe') Chamberlain, by Sir Francis Carruthers Gould ('F.C.G.') (died 1925). See source website for additional information. This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG.
context_page_description: Michael Edward Hicks Beach, 1st Earl St Aldwyn, PC, DL, known as Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Bt, from 1854 to 1906 and subsequently as The Viscount St Aldwyn to 1915, was a British Conservative politician. Known as "Black Michael", he notably served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1885 to 1886 and again from 1895 to 1902 and also led the Conservative Party in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1886. Due to the length of his service, he was Father of the House from 1901 to 1906, when he took his peerage.
context_section_description: From 1888 to 1892 Hicks Beach returned to active work as President of the Board of Trade, and in 1895, Goschen being transferred to the Admiralty, he again became Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1899 he lowered the fixed charge for the National Debt from twenty-five to twenty-three million, a reduction imperatively required, apart from other reasons, by the difficulties found in redeeming Consols at their then inflated price. When compelled to find means for financing the war in South Africa, he insisted on combining the raising of loans with the imposition of fresh taxation; and besides raising the income-tax each year, he introduced taxes on sugar and exported coal (1901), and in 1902 reimposed the registration duty on corn and flour which had been abolished in 1869 by Lowe. The sale of his Netheravon estates in Wiltshire to the War Office in 1898 occasioned some acrid criticism concerning the valuation, for which, however, Sir Michael himself was not responsible. On Lord Salisbury's retirement in August 1902 Hicks Beach also left the government.
  Following his resignation, Sir Michael and Lady Lucy Hicks Beach, with their family, visited Egypt in late 1902.
caption: Michael Hicks Beach (centre) with Arthur Balfour (left) and Joseph Chamberlain (right), by Sir Francis Carruthers Gould.
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