SONNINO, SIDNEY. — Statesman, born in Pisa on 11 March 1874, died in Rome on 24 November 1922.
After spending seven years (1867–73) in the diplomatic service, he settled in Rome, where he founded and directed the Rassegna, first a weekly and later a daily newspaper, which expressed the views of the Destra, then precisely excluded from power. A deputy from 1880, he became undersecretary and Minister of Finance under Crispi: in 1896 he brought the budget into balance. Faithful to Crispi even after Adua, he was the acknowledged leader of the constitutional opposition, although he never wished to bind his supporters together in an autonomous party. In 1906 and again in 1909, he held the presidency of the Council of Ministers, but only for a few months, and thus was unable to implement the reforms he advocated, aimed on the one hand at improving the condition of the working classes and on the other at strengthening the authority of the State through a more rigorous and exact application of the Constitution. Opposed by Giolitti, he was disliked by most on account of his reserved and disdainful character; in 1914—after the death of San Giuliano—Salandra called him to the Foreign Affairs portfolio, which he held until 1918. An Israelite by birth and a Protestant by religion, he had inserted into the Treaty of London concluded by him the clause excluding the Holy See from participation in the future peace conference, and he concluded the agreements reached at the meetings of S. Giovanni di Moriana and Rapallo. Minister of Foreign Affairs also in the Boselli and Orlando cabinets, he was the foremost among the Italian delegates at Versailles; but his clashes with Clemenceau and, above all, with Wilson prevented him from securing for Italy the benefits he had hoped for. Upon the fall of the Orlando ministry, he withdrew from public life and did not take part in the work of the Senate, although he had been granted a seat there in 1920. His last political act was the manifesto against the introduction of proportional representation in general elections, which he regarded as subversive of parliamentary practice.