France, at the most untimely season, has lost her Finance
Minister, M. HUMANE ; who was found dead in his library on Monday last—a victim, it is supposed, to the toils of statesmanship. M. HUMANE was endowed with unusual strength of determination : his dogged obstinacy bore down his colleagues in the Cabinet, his friends and opponents in the Chambers, and the nation itself,—as in the case of the resurvey of taxes, if that can be regarded as a thing accom- plished, which perhaps the fact hardly warrants. His firmness and his confidence in himself commanded the confidence of others, which was justified by his ability as a financier. Irksome, and even inconve- nient as it was to have such a colleague, it seems to be generally considered that the Sourr-Guizor Cabinet could not spare their impracticable coadjutor. The supposition would have more weight if France were really isolated from the world, without external po- litical relations. As it is, though the Ministry may lose a good instrument in the official business of finance, they are also released from an unpopular and embarrassing companion. M. HUMANE would have risked a revolution to carry the resurvey of taxes ; he would have risked a war with England to fine an English courier who had committed a technical fault against the Post-office law ; and he expired in the act of writing a despatch to the Postmasters of France to carry on the contest with the London newspapers. A man who could so confound great and petty interests, and sacrifice all alike to his own will, can be no irreparable loss to a nation.
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