The political commitment

The positions he held in Naples and Florence as Embassy Secretary developed his interest for political issues.

When he was still a Chargé d’Affaires in Florence, he turned 40 years old, the legal age to be eligible as a Member of Parliament. The change of the political situation in France in 1830 led him to leave diplomacy.

His political career really started by his election as a Member of Parliament for the North region in January 1833. With the renewal of all the General Councils that took place in France on 17 November 1833, and whose members would be from now on elected according to the norms of the census suffrage then in place, Lamartine was a candidate for the district of Northern Macon, thus wishing to keep an anchoring in his native region.

A General Councilor from 1833 to 1851, he took his role very seriously and became fully involved in the local economic and cultural development as the positioning of Macon on the new railway line or the transformation of the municipal college into a royal college thus facilitating the creation of a prestigious secondary education. On the national level, his involvement was as strong in favor of issues that were topical and that proved his opening to modernity : the abolition of slavery and the death penalty or the implementation of the universal suffrage, which are causes he never stopped defending at the Parliament Chamber.

His talents of orator along with his very hard work enabled him to master technical questions linked to the sugar production or the conversion of annuities, ensuring him the recognition of his peers.

To fulfill his mandate as Member of Parliament, he stayed six months of the year in Paris, rue de l’Université. In his flat, where he received on Wednesdays and Saturdays, celebrities and artists such as Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Victor Hugo, Jules Michelet, Franz Liszt, Théodore Gudin or Henri Lehmann.