I hope my American readers will not have quite forgotten the meaning of the term "swell," now somewhat falling into disuse, but at one time very commonly employed in England to describe a member of what would now be called "smart society." Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has held many offices. He has been Under-Secretary for the Home Department, and Secretary to the Poor Law Board; he has been twice Chief Secretary for Ireland, or, to speak more strictly, Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and he has been twice Chancellor of the Exchequer. I need hardly say that he was not able to accomplish much during the periods of his Irish administration. I have said in preceding articles that it is not possible for the Chief Secretary of a Conservative Government to accomplish anything worth attempting in the work of Irish administration. What Ireland demands is the right to manage her own national affairs in her own domestic Parliament, and there is nothing worth doing to be done by any government which will not take serious account of her one predominant claim. No patronage of local charities, local flower shows, and local racecourses, no amount of Dublin Castle hospitalities, no vice-regal visits to public schools and municipal institutions, can bring about any real improvement in the relations between Great Britain and Ireland. I have no doubt that Hicks-Beach did all in his power to see that the business of his department was efficiently and honestly conducted in Dublin Castle, but under the conditions imposed upon him by Conservative principles it was impossible for him to accomplish any success in the administration of Irish affairs. It has often come into my mind that a certain sense of his limitations in this way was sometimes apparent in the bearing and manner of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, when he had to take any prominent part in the business of Dublin Castle. He has an active mind and a ready faculty of initiative, and there was no place for such a man in the sort of administrative work which mainly consists in the endeavor to keep things going as they have been going, and striving after an impossible compromise between despotic principles and a free constitutional system.