The leaders of the Saint-Simonian religion were Enfantin and Bazard, the Supreme Fathers. Rodrigues had been chosen by Saint-Simon as his successor, but he generously ceded his position to them as his superiors, in accordance with the rule that rank should be the measure of capacity. The new faith gained a large number of adherents after the Revolution of July, 1830.[56] Some of these became prominent afterwards, some of them were then men of wealth and importance. The best known are perhaps Buchez, who wrote a “Parliamentary History of the Revolution,” and was President of the Constituent Assembly of 1830; Laurent, a distinguished author and professor; Michel Chevalier, a civil engineer, since celebrated as a writer and a political economist; Barrault, professor of literature at the College of Sorèze, a dramatic author of distinction, some of whose plays had been performed at the Théâtre Français, and an orator of remarkable eloquence; Fournel, who had studied at the Polytechnic and afterwards made a name as an engineer; Adolphe Blanqui, who became an orthodox political economist, and wrote a “History of Political Economy,” and Pierre Leroux,[57] who at a later period became the exponent of Humanitarianism, a kind of Saint-Simonism modified and tinctured with Hegelian philosophy, and under whose influence several of Madame Sand’s works, as “Consuelo” and “La Comtesse de Rudolstadt,” were written. Other men of more or less note, bankers, lawyers, merchants, and particularly all kinds of engineers, joined them. The École Polytechnique was ever their stronghold. De Lesseps, an engineer who has disturbed the peace of many Americans, was also for a time connected with them.