On 12 July 1789 he entered the chamber of King Louis XVI to report on events in Paris. "It's a revolt, then?" the king asked. "No, Sire, it is a revolution,"  was his answer. 
A liberal aristocrat, Anglophilic and patriotic in his outlook, he was appointed chair of the Constituent Assembly's committee of mendicity which, in a series of reports in 1790 and 1791, elaborated a remarkable scheme of public assistance, a kind of 'welfare state' in which a variety of government pensions funded out of state taxation aimed to relieve a wide variety of categories of the needy. His plan was taken further by the Convention in 1793-1794, but by then he was
in exile, following an attempt to aid the escape of Louis XVI in 1792.
In 1799 he returned to France from England and, for the rest of his life, was associated with a wide list of 'improving' and liberal causes. These included vaccination, dispensaries, friendly societies, prison reform, slave emancipation, technical education and soup kitchens.
On 27 March 1827, in Paris, he died aged eighty.
 

Source: Leo van de Pas