He became minister of instruction in the government of Na tional Defence on Sept. 5, 1870. After the capitulation of Paris in January 1871 he was sent down to Bordeaux to prevent the resistance of Gambetta to the peace. But at Bordeaux Gambetta, who had issued a proclamation excluding from the elections offi cials under the Empire, was all powerful. He affected to dispute Jules Simon's credentials, and issued orders for his arrest. Mean while Simon had found means of communication with Paris, and on Feb. 6, was reinforced by Eugene Pelletan, E. Arago and Gamier-Pages. Gambetta resigned, and the ministry of the In terior, though nominally given to Arago to avoid the appearance of a personal issue, was really in Simon's hands. Defeated in the department of the Seine, he sat for the Marne in the National Assembly, and resumed the portfolio of education in the first cabinet of M. Thiers's presidency. He retained office until a week before the fall of Thiers in 1873.
Simon was regarded by the monarchical Right as one of the most dangerous obstacles in the way of a restoration, which he did as much as any man (except perhaps the comte de Chambord himself) to prevent, but by the extreme Left he was distrusted for his moderate views, and Gambetta never forgave his victory at Bordeaux. In 1875 he became a member of the French Academy and a life senator, and in 1876, on the resignation of M. Dufaure, was summoned to form a cabinet. He replaced anti republican functionaries in the civil service by republicans, and held his own until May 3, 1877, when he adopted a motion car ried by a large majority in the Chamber inviting the cabinet to use all means for the repression of clerical agitation. Marshal
MacMahon then practically demanded his resignation. This act of the president, known as the "Seize Mai," drove him finally from office. He justified his action in submitting instead of ap pealing to the Chamber by his fear of providing an opportunity for a coup d'etat on the part of the marshal.
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 Simon's intervention. He was in fact the chief of the Left Centre opposed to the radicalism of Jules Grevy and Gambetta. He was director of the Gaulois from 1879 to 1881, and his influence in the country among moderate republicans was retained by his articles in the Alatin from 1882 onwards, in the Journal des Debats, which he joined in 1886, and in the Temps from 1890.
He left accounts of some of the events in which he had participated in Souvenirs du 4 septembre (1874), Le Gouvernement de M. Thiers (2 vols., 1878), in Memoires des autres (1889), Nouveaux memoires des autres (1891) and Les Derniers memoires des autres (1897), while his sketch of Victor Cousin (1887) was a further contribution to con temporary history. For his personal history the Premiers memoires (Iwo) and Le Soir de ma journee (1902), edited by his son Gustave Simon, may be supplemented by Leon Seche's Figures bretonnes, Jules Simon, sa vie, son oeuvre (new ed., 1898), and G. Picot, Jules Simon: notice historique . . . (1897) ; also by many references to periodical literature and collected essays in Hugo P. Thieme's Guide biblio graphique de la Litt. franc. de 1800 d 'god (19o7).