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Front Page > Reading Lists > 19th Century French Political Economy Part 6 - The Say Family

19th Century French Political Economy Part 6 - The Say Family

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These articles first appeared in the Dictionnaire d’Économie Politique, ed. Guillaumin and Charles Coquelin (Paris: Guillaumin, 1852) and were translated into English and included in Lalor’s Cyclopedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States by the best American and European Authors, ed. John J. Lalor (Chicago: M.B. Carey, 1899) in 3 vols.

The French political economists of the the 19th century, or “the economists” as they liked to call themselves, are less well known than the classical school which appeared in England at the same time. The French political economists differed from their English counterparts on a number of grounds: the radicalism of their support for free markets, the founding of their beliefs on doctrines of natural rights and natural law, and the intellectual debt they owed to Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832). Some of their leading figures were Say, Charles Comte, Charles Dunoyer, Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), Charles Coquelin, Joseph Garnier, Hippolyte Passy, Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912), and Léon Faucher.

The Say family was an important liberal family in 19th century France which helped to develop and spread classical liberal and free market ideas. The family was made up of Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) the economist, Horace Émile Say (1794-1860) the businessman and activist, and Léon Say (1826-96) the businessman and politician. Their lives spanned nearly 130 years covering the major events of the Revolution, the empire of Napoleon, the empire of Napoleon III, and the Third Republic.

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Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) was the leading French political economist in the first third of the nineteenth century. Before becoming an academic political economist quite late in life, Say apprenticed in a commercial office, working for a life insurance company; he also worked as a journalist, soldier, politician, cotton manufacturer, and writer. During the revolution he worked on the journal of the idéologues, La Décade philosophique, littéraire, et politique, for which he wrote articles on political economy from 1794 to 1799. In 1814 he was asked by the government to travel to England on a fact-finding mission to discover the secret of English economic growth and to report on the impact of the revolutionary wars on the British economy. His book De l’Angleterre et des Anglais (1815) was the result. After the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, Say was appointed to teach economics in Paris, first at the Athénée, then as a chair in “industrial economics” at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, and finally the first chair in political economy at the Collège de France. Say is best known for his Traité d’économie politique (1803), which went through many editions (and revisions) during his lifetime. One of his last major works, the Cours complet d’économie politique pratique (1828-33), was an attempt to broaden the scope of political economy, away from the preoccupation with the production of wealth, by examining the moral, political, and sociological requirements of a free society and how they interrelated with the study of political economy.

Horace Émile Say (1794-1860) was the son of Jean-Baptiste Say. Married Anne Cheuvreux, sister of Casimir Cheuvreux, whose family were friends of Bastiat. Say was a businessman and traveled in 1813 to the United States and Brazil. A result of his trip was Historie des relations commerciales entre la France et le Brésil (1839). He became president of the Chamber of Commerce of Paris in 1834, became a councillor of state (1849-51), and headed an important inquiry into the state of industry in the Paris region (1848-51). Say was also very active in liberal circles, participating in the foundation of the Société d’économie politique, the Guillaumin publishing firm, the Journal des économistes, the Journal du commerce; and was an important collaborator in the creation of the Dictionnaire de l’économe politique and the Dictionaire du commerce et des marchandises. In 1857 he was nominated to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques but died before he could join it formally.

Léon Say (1826-96) was a son of Horace Say and had a career as a banker and administrator of the Chemin de fer du nord. Say wrote a number of articles for the Jouural des débats and was a prominent popularizer of free trade and other economic issues. After 1871 he had a distinguished political career as a deputy for La Seine and then as minister of finance in the Third Republic, where he pursued policies of reducing taxation, deregulating internal trade, and opposing the Méline Tariff. In 1880 he was appointed ambassador to England. Say was elected to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques and also to the Académie française. He was a key editor of and contributor to the Nouveau dictionnaire d’économie politique (1891–92). Many of his writings on finance can be found in Les Finances de la France sous la troisième république (1898-1901).

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