Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/420

Rh is frequently worse than inharmonious, and his diction so prosaic as to evince that his power of expression bore no proportion to his power of thought. His best poem is ‘Desultory Thoughts in London,’ which contains, with other good passages, a beautiful description of his home in Westmoreland, and deeply felt though poorly composed eulogies on Lamb and Coleridge. His abilities as a thinker were rated highly. ‘It was really a delightful luxury,’ declares De Quincey, ‘to hear him giving free scope to his powers for investigating subtle combinations of character.’ ‘His mind,’ says Talfourd, ‘was chiefly remarkable for a fine power of analysis. In this power of discriminating and distinguishing, carried almost to a pitch of painfulness, Lloyd has scarcely been equalled.’ 

LLOYD, CHARLES DALTON CLIFFORD (1844–1891), servant of the crown, eldest son of Colonel Robert Clifford Lloyd of the 68th Durham light infantry, by his wife, a daughter of Captain George Savage of the 13th light dragoons, was born at Portsmouth on 13 Jan. 1844. His grandfather was Bartholomew Lloyd [q. v.], provost of Trinity College, Dublin, 1831–7, and the same office was afterwards held by his uncle, Humphrey Lloyd (1800–1881) [q. v.] He was educated at Sandhurst, but instead of the army he entered in 1862 the police force in British Burmah, where he subsequently filled the offices of assistant and deputy-commissioner and inspector-general of registration. He came home in 1872 and read law at Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the bar in Trinity term 1875, having already been appointed, 16 Feb. 1874, resident magistrate for co. Down, Ireland. In this capacity he displayed equal energy and discretion, and in January 1881 was entrusted with the onerous duty of restoring order in co. Longford. Though not expressly invested with extraordinary powers, he acted from the first on the assumption that all the forces of the crown within his jurisdiction were at his disposal, and by this means, and also by making a liberal use of the power of remand, whereby he dispensed in most cases with the necessity for further proceedings, effected the pacification of the county in a few months. In May he was transferred to Kilmallock, co. Limerick, where the land league had become the de facto government. By the arrest, however, under the Protection of Person and Property Act, on 20 May of Father Sheehy and other leading representatives of the league, followed by that of other leaguers at Kilfinane, and by a steady and vigorous administration of the ordinary law, Lloyd gradually restored its authority. During this period he was made the subject of violent attacks in the House of Commons and the Irish press, and he was in hourly danger of assassination. Fully alive to the defects of the Protection of Person and Property Act, which he held could only be put in force with advantage against combinations, he concerted with Mr. Forster in December 1881 a scheme for infusing new vigour into the administration of the ordinary law. The country was divided into five districts, each presided over by a special resident magistrate, invested with executive authority over the entire forces of the crown within his jurisdiction. Himself appointed special resident magistrate for the Limerick district, he organised during the winter of 1881–2 an efficient system of combined military and police protection. He was also mainly responsible for the administration of the Prevention of Crimes Act of 1882 within his district; and when in September 1883 the state of the country enabled his services to be dispensed with, he was able to boast that no case of grave agrarian crime had occurred within his district during his tenure of office.

Lloyd entered the service of the khedive of Egypt as inspector-general of reforms in 1883, and was soon advanced to the post of under-secretary at the home office. With characteristic energy he threw himself into schemes for sanitation, local self-government, and the cleansing of the Augean stables of justice. His proposals for the reform of prison management, formulated in January 1884, and partially carried into effect during the spring, excited the opposition of the Mudirs, whose powers they abridged, of Procureur-Général Sir Benson Maxwell, who was committed to another scheme, and finally of the Egyptian minister, Nubar Pasha, who in April talked of resigning in consequence. Lloyd, though supported at the outset by Sir Evelyn Baring, found his position untenable, and towards the end of May resigned. On his return to England he explained his plan of reform in a letter to the ‘Times,’ 30 June 1884 (see also the Times of 7 and 10 July following, and 29 Sept. 1888).

In the spring of 1885 Lloyd resumed the duties of resident magistrate in Ireland,