HELWAN, a well-known health resort in Egypt, 16 nl. south of Cairo and connected with it by rail. Standing 15o ft. above the Nile level, and surrounded by desert, it enjoys a dry equable climate specially suitable for invalids; and it possesses strong sulphur and salt springs with a natural temperature of 91 ° F. The Egyptian government opened a fully equipped thermal es tablishment in 1900, and the station has been provided with hotels and all the usual forms of amusement familiar at European spas. An astronomical observatory was built here in 1903-04, to re place the former observatory at Abbasia. On the opposite bank of the river lie the ruins of Memphis and the famous pyramids of Sakkara.
JOHN (1724-1794), Irish law yer, statesman, and provost of Trinity college, Dublin, son of Francis Hely, a gentleman of County Cork, was educated at Trinity college, Dublin, and was called to the Irish bar in 1748. He took the additional name of Hutchinson on his marriage in 1751. He entered the Irish House of Commons in 1759, but joining the "patriotic" party in opposition to the Government, and although he afterwards joined the administration he never abandoned his advocacy of popular measures.
For his support of the Augmentation bill (for an increase in the army establishment in Ireland) carried in the session of 1769, Hely-Hutchinson received an addition of £s,000 a year to the salary of his sinecure of Alnagar, a major's commission in a cavalry regiment, and a promise of the secretaryship of State. He was at this time one of the most brilliant debaters in the Irish parliament, and he was enjoying an exceedingly lucrative practice at the bar, which, with his sinecure, he sacrificed in 1774 to become provost of Trinity college, Dublin.
In the Irish House he advocated free trade, the relief of the Catholics from penal legislation, and the reform of parliament. He was one of the very earliest politicians to recognize the soundness of Adam Smith's views on trade ; and he quoted from the Wealth of Nations, adopting some of its principles, in his Commercial Restraints of Ireland, published in 1779, which Lecky pronounces "one of the best specimens of political litera ture produced in Ireland in the latter half of the 18th century." Hely-Hutchinson's remarkably able state paper on the economic condition of Ireland (ms. in the Record Office, London), showed clear traces of the influence of Adam Smith. Not less enlightened were his views on the Catholic question.
In 1777 Hely-Hutchinson became secretary of State. When Grattan in 1782 moved an address to the king containing a declaration of Irish legislative independence, Hely-Hutchinson supported the attorney-general's motion postponing the question; but on April 16, after the Easter recess, he read a message from the lord lieutenant, the duke of Portland, giving the king's per mission for the House to take the matter into consideration, and he expressed his personal sympathy with the popular cause which Grattan on the same day brought to a triumphant issue (see GRATTAN, HENRY). Hely-Hutchinson supported the opposition on the regency question in 1788, and one of his last votes in the House was in favour of parliamentary reform. He died at Buxton on Sept. 4, In 1785 his wife had been created Baroness Donoughmore and on her death in 1788, his eldest son Richard (1756-1825) suc ceeded to the title.
See W. E. H. Lecky, Hist. of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (5 vols., 1892) ; J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (3 vols., 1872-74) ; H. Grattan, Memoirs of the Life and Times of Henry Grattan (8 vols., ; Baratariana, by various writers (Dublin, 1773).