Roundell Palmer, Statesmen No. 108

Adriano Cecioni's chromolithograph presents Roundell Palmer — Lord Chancellor-in-waiting, High Anglican, and Conservative dissenter within Gladstone's Liberal coalition — as a portly, self-satisfied elder in a dark frock coat, one hand raised in a gesture of mild reproof, chin lifted with lawyerly complacency. The caption anchors the political point precisely: 'He refused the Woolsack, and voted against the Disestablishment of the Irish Church.' Palmer had turned down the Lord Chancellorship rather than support Irish Church disestablishment in 1868 — a principled stand his admirers called conscience, his critics called obstruction. Cecioni exaggerates the heavy jowls and receding brow; the caricature mocks English establishment pomposity.