As might be expected, Dumas's oratory found an ample field in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate; and whether setting forth a project of recasting the copper coinage or a law of drainage, or ridiculing the absurd theories of homoeopathy, he riveted the attention of his colleagues as completely as he had entranced the students at the Sorbonne. In the early part of his life, Dumas was a voluminous writer, and in 1828 published the "Traite de Chimie appliquee aux Arts," in eight large octavo volumes, with an atlas of plates in quarto. But besides this extended treatise, the two volumes of lectures just referred to are his only important literary works. He published numerous papers in scientific journals, which, as we have seen, produced a most marked effect on the growth of chemical science. But the number of his monographs is not large compared with those of many of his contemporaries, and his work is to be judged by its importance and influence rather than by the extent of the field which it covers. In his capacity of President of the Municipal Council at Paris, of Minister of Agricultural Commerce, of Vice-President of the High Council of Education, and of Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, Dumas had abundant opportunity for the exercise of his administrative ability, and no one has questioned his great powers in this direction; but in regard to his political career we could not expect the same unanimity of opinion. That he was a liberal under Louis Philippe, and a reactionist under Louis Napoleon, may possibly be reconciled with a fixed political faith and an unswerving aim for the public good; but his scheme for "civilian billeting" (by which wealthy people having rooms to spare in their houses would have been compelled to billet artisans employed in public works) leads one to infer that his statesmanship was not equal to his science. Nevertheless, there can be no question about his large-hearted charity. He instituted the "Credit Foncier," which flourishes in great prosperity to this day; he also founded the "Caisse de Retraite pour la Vieillesse," and several other agricultural charities, which, though less successful, afford great assistance to aged workmen. Louis Napoleon used to say in jest that the whole of the War Minister's budget would not have been enough to realize M. Dumas's benevolent schemes; and once, half-dazzled, half-amused, by one of the chemist's vast sanitary projects, he called him "the poet of hygiene."