Although intimate with Lafayette and others, he took no 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".

As secretary of the municipal commission, which sat at the hôtel-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.

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 Jérôme Pétion 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.

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 Mêmoires.

Napoleon took his oath on 20 December 1848 a day ahead of schedule, and appointed a ministry that included Barrot and the conservative Frédéric Alfred Pierre, comte de Falloux.

[7] A biographer said that Barrot had hoped to extract Liberal measures, but was dismissed as soon as he had served the president's purpose of avoiding open conflict.

After the fall of the empire he was nominated by Adolphe Thiers, whom he had supported under Louis Philippe, as president of the council of state, but his powers were failing, and he had only filled his new office for about a year when he died at Bougival.