Say, JEAN BAPTISTE

Say, JEAN BAPTISTE, a French political economist, was born at Lyons, 5th January 1767. Being destined for a commercial career, he passed a part of his youth in England, and on his return to France began his work in a life-insurance office. On the outbreak of the Revolution he made his way to Paris, and worked for Mirabeau on the Courrier de Provence, and a year or two later acted as secretary to Clavière, the minister of finance. From 1794 to 1800 he edited a journal called La Décade, in which he expounded with great effect the views of Adam Smith. After 18th Brumaire (1799) he was appointed a member of the tribunate, but at the end of a few years he began to express his disapprobation of the arbitrary tendencies of the new consular government, and in 1804 ceased to be a member of a body that had become a mere tool in the hands of Bonaparte. Under the despotism of the empire Say was forced into private life, and betook himself to industrial pursuits. In 1803 he issued the first edition of his principal book, Traité d'Économie Politique (8th ed. 1876). In 1814 the French government sent him to England to study the economical condition of that country: he laid down the results of his journey in De l'Angleterre et des Anglais (1816). From 1819 he lectured on political economy at the Conservatory of Arts and Trades, and in 1831 was appointed professor of Political Economy at the Collège de France, but died 16th November 1832. A follower of Adam Smith, but an independent and sagacious writer, Say was the first to teach Frenchmen to consider rationally such questions as customs-duties, the currency, public credit, the colonies, and taxation, and to him belongs the credit of having made Adam Smith extensively known on the Continent. Besides the books cited he also wrote Catéchisme d'Économie Politique (1815; 6th ed. 1881), Cours Complet d'Économie Politique (1828-30)—this merely an expansion of the Traité—and Mélanges et Correspondance (1833). His principal writings form vols. 9-12 in Guillaumin's Collection des Économistes.