SONNINO, SIDNEY BARON (1847-1922), Italian states man and financier, was born at Florence on March 11, Entering the diplomatic service at an early age, he was appointed successively to the legations of Madrid, Vienna, Berlin and Versailles, but in 1871 returned to Italy, to devote himself to political and social studies. On his own initiative he conducted exhaustive inquiries into the conditions of the Sicilian peasants and of the Tuscan metayers, and in 1877 published in co-opera tion with Signor Leopoldo Franchetti a masterly work on Sicily (La Sicilia, Florence, 1877). In 1878 he founded a weekly eco nomic review, La Rassegna Settimanale, which four years later he converted into a political daily journal. Elected deputy in 188o, he distinguished himself by trenchant criticism of Magliani's finance, and upon the fall of Magliani was for some months, in 1889, under-secretary of State for the treasury. In view of the severe monetary crisis of 1893 he was entrusted by Crispi with the portfolio of finance (Dec. 1893), and by energetic measures he averted national bankruptcy, and placed Italian finance upon a sounder basis than at any time since the fall of the Right. Though averse from the policy of unlimited colonial expansion, he provided by a loan for the cost of the Abyssinian War in which the tactics of General Baratieri had involved the Crispi cabinet, but fell with Crispi after the disaster at Adowa (March 1896). Assuming then the leadership of the constitutional op position, he combated the alliance between the Di Rudini cabinet and the subversive parties, criticized the financial schemes of the treasury minister, Luzzatti, and opposed the "democratic" finance of the first Pelloux administration as likely to endanger financial stability. After the modification of the Pelloux cabinet
(May 1899) he became leader of the ministerial majority, and bore the brunt of the struggle against Socialist obstruction in connection with the Public Safety bill. Upon the formation of the Zanardelli cabinet (Feb. 1901) he once more became leader of the constitutional opposition, and in the autumn of the year founded a daily organ, 11 Giornale d'Italia, the better to propagate mode rate Liberal ideas. He was prime minister for a few months in 1906.
In the autumn of 1914, he became foreign minister in the Salandra cabinet. He was still foreign minister, under Orlando's premiership, during the Peace Conference, which he attended as second Italian delegate from Jan. 18 to June 19, 1919. On the fall of the Orlando cabinet (June 19, 1919) Sonnino retired into private life. He died on Nov. 24, 1922.