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, 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.
Other public appointments
He accepted the chairmanship of the Royal Commission on Ritualistic Practices in the Church, and he did valuable work as an arbitrator; and though when the fiscal controversy arose he became the first president of the Unionist Free Food League, his parliamentary loyalty to Balfour did much to prevent the Unionist free-traders from precipitating a rupture. Hicks-Beach was appointed to be a Deputy Lieutenant for the county of Gloucestershire in 1861. In 1906 he was raised to the peerage as Viscount St Aldwyn, of Coln St Aldwyn, in the County of Gloucester, and in 1915 he was further honoured when he was made Viscount Quenington, of Quenington, in the County of Gloucester, and Earl St Aldwyn, of Coln St Aldwyn, in the County of Gloucester.
Family
Lord St Aldwyn married firstly, Caroline Susan Elwes, daughter of John Henry Elwes by Mary Bromley, sister of Henry John Elwes, and secondly Lady Lucy Catherine Fortescue, daughter of Hugh Fortescue, 3rd Earl Fortescue, in 1874. They had one son, Viscount Quenington, also a politician, and three daughters. His second daughter, Susan Hicks Beach, was the sitter representing Britannia on the reverse of the Edward VII silver florins issued from 1902 to 1910 and designed by George William de Saulles. She chose the single life residing with her mother for sundry years subsequent to World War II cultivating and caring for the family lands in the Cotswolds. Lord St Aldwyn died in April 1916, aged 78, only a week after his son was killed in action in the First World War, and was succeeded in his titles by his grandson Michael, who also became a Conservative politician. Lucy, The Countess St Aldwyn had been involved with Elizabeth Malleson in the creating of a Rural Nursing Association in the 1880s. This organisation was successful and incorporated in similar initiatives by Queen Victoria. The countess died in March 1940. The coastal town of Beachport in the Australian state of South Australia was named after Lord St Aldwyn in 1878.
