In 1836 he entered the service of his father, then minister of the interior, as chief of a department, became master of requests in the Council of State in 1837, and in 1842 was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Bastia in Corsica.

He was an advocate of religious liberty, prison reform, abolition of slavery, and the rights of the Protestant church, of which he was a member.

In the winter, he delivered courses of lectures on economical, historical, and religious subjects, many of which were subsequently published.

He recorded the activity of table movements which he believed were the result of a physical force emanating from the bodies of the sitters.

He proposed a theory of fluidic action (termed "ectenic force"), which he believed could explain the phenomena.

He noted that Gasperin's claim of the movement of tables without material contact was a "physical impossibility" and that he was never able to reproduce the phenomena before the French scientific community.