Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/445

 as is shown by his paper (in the ‘Trans. R. I. A.’) on the so-called Median and Persian inscriptions, and others on the Babylonian inscriptions, and those of Van, which he then regarded as Indo-European with a practically Babylonian alphabet. The analytical powers displayed in these essays are very considerable. Hincks enjoyed the distinction of the discovery at Killyleagh of the Persian cuneiform vowel system (R. I. A. vol. xxi.) simultaneously with Rawlinson's independent discovery of the same at Bagdad, and his review of the latter's memoir on the Behistun inscriptions (Dublin University Magazine, January 1847) is at once luminous and scholarly. Many other discoveries may be noted among his numerous articles, mainly contributed to the ‘Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy,’ of which the chief are: ‘The Enchorial Language of Egypt,’ 1833; ‘On the Egyptian Stele,’ 1847; ‘Catalogue of the Egyptian MSS. in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin,’ 1843; ‘On the Hieroglyphic Alphabet,’ 1847; ‘On the three kinds of Persopolitan Writing,’ 1847; ‘On the Khorsabad Inscriptions,’ 1850; ‘On the Assyrio-Babylonian Phonetic Character,’ 1850; ‘Assyrian Mythology,’ 1850; ‘On the Chronology of the 26th Egyptian Dynasty,’ 1850; ‘On Certain Ethnological Boulders,’ 1850; ‘List of Assyrio-Babylonian Characters with Phonetic Values,’ 1852; ‘On the Relation between the Accadian and the Indo-European, Semitic, and Egyptian Languages,’ 1855 (?); ‘On the Assyrian Verbs’ (Journal Sacred Lit. 1855), 1856; ‘Inscr. of Tiglath Pileser,’ 1857; ‘On the Polyphony of the Assyrio-Babylonian Cuneiform Character,’ 1863; ‘Hiéroglyphes et cunéiformes’ (in Chabas' ‘Mélanges Egyptologiques,’ 1864); ‘Assyrio-Babylonian Measures of Time,’ 1865. He began an ‘Assyrian Grammar’ in the ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society’ (new ser. iii. 1866), but left no materials for its completion. 

HINCKS, FRANCIS (1807–1885), Canadian statesman, born at Cork in 1807, was youngest son of Thomas Dix Hincks [q. v.] He received a classical education under his father at Fermoy and Belfast. In his seventeenth year he began commercial life as clerk in a firm of Belfast shipowners. After emigrating to Canada in 1831 he opened a warehouse at Toronto in premises belonging to William Baldwin, father of Robert Baldwin, the future prime minister of Canada, and soon obtained a high reputation as a man of business. From the first, he interested himself in Canadian politics, and during the rebellion of 1837 earnestly espoused the liberal cause. In 1838 he successfully started the ‘Examiner’ newspaper, with the motto ‘Responsible Government and the Voluntary Principle.’ In March 1841 he was elected for the county of Oxford to the first parliament held after the union of the two Canadian provinces, and in the ensuing year became inspector-general of public accounts in the Baldwin-Lafontaine ministry.

Hincks took a prominent part in parliament, and helped to pass the Municipal Act of 1 Jan. 1842, which transferred the administration of local affairs from quarter-sessions to local councils elected by popular vote. Soon after the arrival in May 1843 of Sir Charles Metcalfe as governor-general, who refused to regard himself as in any way subject to the Canadian parliament, the Baldwin-Lafontaine ministry resigned. In November 1844 parliament was dissolved. Hincks was defeated at Oxford, and a conservative majority was returned to the new parliament.

In 1844 Hincks started the ‘Montreal Pilot,’ which became the leading opposition journal. The chief point in agitation was the secularisation of the clergy reserves, which the conservative ministry refused to undertake. In 1846 the government voted a sum of 10,000l. to compensate the loyalists in Upper Canada who had suffered in the rebellion. A demand for similar compensation at once came from Lower Canada. After much agitation, a sum of about 10,000l. was voted. This only amounted to one twenty-fifth of the claims, and owing to Hincks and his friends the demand for a Rebellion Losses Bill for Lower Canada became a cardinal article of the liberal programme.

In June 1847 James Bruce, eighth earl of Elgin [q. v.], became governor. The legislature was dissolved in December. The new elections resulted in a large liberal majority, and in the second Baldwin-Lafontaine cabinet Hincks resumed his old place of inspector-general. On 18 Jan. 1849 the government introduced the celebrated Rebellion Losses Bill, proposing a loan of 100,000l., to be applied to the indemnification of those persons in Lower Canada who had received no benefit from the act of 1846. The debt was to be charged on the consolidated revenues of the two provinces, a great injustice to Upper Canada. Only those persons actually found guilty of rebellion by a court of law were excluded from any share in the compensation money. The loyalists of Upper Canada resolved to stop the passage of the bill at all costs. Its final acceptance by Lord Elgin, after a long and bitter struggle, was the signal for a popular outbreak in Montreal.