The late French premier, was the son of a rich merchant at Grenoble, where he was born October 12, 1777. At an early age he entered the army: he served in the Italian campaigns of 1799 and 1800, in the staff of the Military Engineers. On the death of his father, however, he quitted the service and devoted himself wholly to commercial pursuits. In 1802, he opened a bank at Paris, and subsequently, establishments for cotton-spinning and sugar-refining, and a steam flour mill, all of which were eminently successful, and contributed to the formation of his immense fortune. He first became known to the public in 1816, by a pamphlet against the foreign loan system, which was equally remarkable for its clearness of argument and profound knowledge of finance. In 1817, he was elected one of the Deputies for the Department of the Seine, and from that time until the revolution of 1830, he continued the firm opponent of every ministerial encroachment on the rights and privileges of the people. He particularly distinguished himself by his hostility to the Villele administration; himself supporting almost singly the whole burden of the opposition to the famous budget of Villele, which he disputed, item by item, with talent and perseverance worthy of entering the lists with the distinguished financier to whom he was opposed. When M. de Polignac became President of the Council, the opposition of M. Perier assumed a more violent character, and he was pre-eminent among the 221 deputies who voted the address which led to the fatal ordonnances of July. When the revolution broke out, he at once avowed himself the advocate of the popular cause, and opened his house as the place of meeting of the deputies, who assembled to protest against the illegality of the proceedings of the Crown. Firmly, however, attached to the principles of constitutional opposition, and shrinking, therefore, from the probable effects of a revolution, he was one of the last to abandon the hope that his infatuated sovereign would open his eyes to the gulf on the brink of which he was standing, and by a timely revocation of the ordonnances, prevent the necessity of the extreme measure of an appeal to arms, and a consequent change of dynasty. When these became inevitable, M. Perier attached himself firmly to the work of consolidating the new throne of Louis Philippe, and reassembling those elements of order and stability which the convulsion of July had scattered, but not annihilated. On the dissolution of the ministry of M. Lafitte, M. Casimir Perier was called to the head of the government, and immediately entered into the system of conservative policy, which he continued until the close of his career. The last time he took any important part in the debates of the Chamber of Deputies was on the 20th of March, when he made an ingenious defence of the conduct of government with respect to the events of Grenoble. His last appearance in the Chamber was on the 29th