Simon, JULES

Simon, JULES, French statesman, economist, and author, was born at Lorient (Morbihan), 31st December 1814. He received the names of Jules François Simon Suisse, but on reaching manhood chose the designation of Jules Simon only. After a brilliant educational career, he succeeded Victor Cousin (whose ardent disciple he was) as lecturer on philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1839. He was returned to the Chamber of Deputies for the department of the Côtes-du-Nord in 1848, and took his seat with the Moderate Left. He refused the oath of allegiance to the empire, and by the year 1869 had become one of the most popular chiefs of the Republican party. He was minister of Public Instruction in the Government of National Defence; but in 1873 his measures dealing with secondary education were violently opposed by the clericals, and he resigned. He now became leader of the Republican Left. In 1874 he assumed the direction of the Siècle newspaper; in 1875 he was elected a life-senator; and in 1876 he was appointed prime-minister, taking the portfolio of the Interior. President MacMahon and the Right, however, resented his liberal attitude towards the press, and he forthwith resigned. M. Simon pronounced the funeral oration on M. Thiers. He always showed himself a consistent advocate of Free Trade, and took a prominent part in the revision of the Constitution. Subsequently his Republicanism developed a more conservative character, and he opposed M. Jules Ferry's bill for the expulsion of the religious orders. In 1880 the French Academy elected him a member of the new Supreme Educational Council, and two years later he was elected permanent secretary of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. He died at Paris 8th June 1896. Besides editing Descartes, Bossuet, Malebranche, and Antoine Arnauld, and contributing to the Revue des Deux Mondes and other periodicals (his last work was Indices et Portraits, 1893), Simon was author of Histoire de l'École d'Alexandrie (1844–45); La Liberté de Conscience et La Liberté (1859); La Religion Naturelle (1856); L'Ouvrière (1863); L'École (1864); Le Travail (1866); La Politique Radicale (1868); Souvenirs du 4 Septembre (1874); Le Gouvernement de M. Thiers (1878); Dieu, Patrie, Liberté (1883); Une Académie sous le Directoire (1885); Mémoires des Autres (1889); and Studies on Thiers, Guizot, Remusat, Mignet, Michelet, Henri Martin, Victor Cousin, Cuvier, Reybaud, Chevalier, and F. de Coulanges.