Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Cambray-Digny, Guglielmo

​CAMBRAY-DIGNY, Guglielmo, Conte di, an Italian statesman, born at Florence, in 1823, is the son of Count Louis of Cambray-Digny, who, from being a cobbler, rose to ​be the minister and favourite of Ferdinand III., Grand Duke of Tusany. After completing his studies at Pisa, he returned, at the age of twenty-two, to his native city, where he was received with much favour by Leopold II., who reposed the utmost confidence in him. He always exhorted the Grand Duke, but in vain, to make concessions to the liberal requirements of the times, instead of relying on Austrian support; and in 1859, when the Grand Duke was obliged to flee from his dominions, which were thereupon annexed to Piedmont, Signor Cambray-Digny approved this preliminary step towards the unification of Italy, and was elected one of the deputies for Tuscany. In 1865 he presided, in his capacity of Lord Mayor ("Gonfaloniere") of Florence, at the sixth centenary of the birth of Dante, and pronounced the panegyric of the poet before the statue which was inaugurated on that occasion. His political celebrity, however, does not date farther back than the close of the year 1667, when he was appointed Finance Minister of the kingdom of Italy, and found himself face to face with an enormous deficit, which he endeavoured to reduce by various expedients, including the unpopular grist tax, and the taking up by the State of the tobacco monopoly. Signor Cambray-Digny, by his perseverance and tact, succeeded in carrying this and other projects in spite of the energetic opposition of a formidable party in the Chambers. Towards the close of the year 1869 the Menabrea-Cambray-Digny Cabinet, as it was called, was succeeded by the Lanza Cabinet. Signor Cambray-Digny was then made a senator.