His knowledge of commercial affairs enabled him to contribute articles to the Encyclopédie Méthodique, a three volume encyclopedia of manufacturing and industry, in which, as in all his literary work, he was assisted by his wife.

The city then sent Roland to Paris to inform the Constituent Assembly of the critical state of the silk industry and to ask for relief of Lyon's debt.

They frequented the Society of the Friends of the Constitution, entertaining deputies who later became leading Girondists, and taking an active part in the political landscape.

Madame Roland's salon becoming the rendezvous of Brissot, Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, Maximilien Robespierre, and other leaders of the popular movement – especially François Nicolas Leonard Buzot.

[1] When the Girondins assumed power, Roland found himself appointed minister of the interior on 23 March 1792, displaying both his administrative ability and what the Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, 1911) characterized as "a bourgeois brusqueness".

It became a manifesto of dissatisfaction, and the Assembly's subsequent demand that Roland and other dismissed ministers be reinstated eventually led to the king's dethronement.

His hostility to the Paris Commune prompted him to propose transferring the government to Blois; and his attacks on Robespierre and his associates made him very unpopular.

After failing to seal the armoire de fer (iron chest) found in the Tuileries Palace, containing documents that indicated Louis XVI's relations with corrupt politicians, he was accused of destroying some of the evidence within.

Finally, during the trial of the king, he and the Girondists demanded that the sentence should be decided by a poll of the French people rather than the National Convention.