ate with Lafayette and others, he took
no actual share in their schemes for the overthrow of the government, but
in 1827 he joined the association known as _Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera_. He
presided over the banquet given by the society to the 221 deputies who had
signed the address of March 1830 to Charles X., and threatened to reply to
force by force. After the ordinances of the 26th of July 1830, he joined
the National Guard and took an active part in the revolution. As secretary
of the municipal commission, which sat at the hotel-de-ville and formed
itself into a provisional government, he was charged to convey to the
chamber of deputies a protest embodying the terms which the advanced
Liberals wished to impose on the king to be elected. He supported the idea
of a constitutional monarchy against the extreme Republicans, and he was
appointed one of the three commissioners chosen to escort Charles X. out of
France. On his return he was nominated prefect of the department of the
Seine. His concessions to the Parisian mob and his extreme gentleness
towards those who demanded the prosecution of the ministers of Charles X.
led to an unflattering comparison with Jerome Petion under similar
circumstances. Louis Philippe's government was far from satisfying his
desires for reform, and he persistently urged the "broadening of the bases
of the monarchy," while he protested his loyalty to the dynasty. He was
returned to the chamber of deputies for the department of Eure in 1831. The
day after the demonstration of June 1832 on the occasion of the funeral of
General Lamarque, he made himself indirectly the mouthpiece of the
Democrats in an interview with Louis Philippe, which is given at length in
his _Memoires_. Subsequently, in pleading before the court of cassation on
behalf of one of the rioters, he secured the annulling of the judgments
given by the council of war. The death of the duke of Orleans in 1842 was a
blow to Barrot's party, which sought to substitute the regency of the
duchess of Orleans for that of the duke of Nemours in the event of the
succession of the count of Paris. In 1846 Barrot made a tour in the Near
East, returning in time to take part a second time in the preliminaries of
revolution. He organized banquets of the disaffected in the various cities
of France, and demanded electoral reform to avoid revolution. He did not
foresee the strength of the outbreak for which his eloquence had prepared
the way, and clu