The rejection (1880) of article 7 of Ferry's Education Act, by which the profession of teaching would have been forbidden to members of non-authorized congregations, was due to his intervention. He was in fact one of the chief of the left centre Opportunist Republicans faction, opposed in the same faction to Jules Grévy and also to the Radical Gambetta. He was director of "Le Gaulois" from 1879 to 1881, and his influence in the country among moderate republicans was retained by his articles in "Le Matin" from 1882 onwards, in the "Journal des Débats", which he joined in 1886, and in "Le Temps" from 1890.