James Stansfeld, Statesmen No. 10

Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape') presents James Stansfeld, then a junior Treasury minister, as a brooding figure in frock coat and top hat, clutching a fat portfolio under one arm — the bureaucrat weighed down by papers. The French caption, 'Pour encourager les autres' ('to encourage the others'), is Voltaire's bitter irony from Candide, originally mocking the execution of Admiral Byng as a warning to fellow officers. Applied to Stansfeld, it stings: he had recently survived political disgrace after his name surfaced in connection with Italian republican conspirator Felice Orsini, suggesting his survival in office served chiefly as a cautionary example to colleagues tempted by radical associations. Pellegrini's hooked nose and heavy-lidded glower carry the ethnic exaggeration typical of the period's caricature vocabulary.