Jean Baptiste Say

Jean Baptiste Say (1767—1832) Jean Baptiste Say was an economist and businessman He had Liberal views and argued m favor of competition, free trade, and lifting restraints on business. He was born 5 January 1767 in Lyon France and his father, Jean-Etienne Etienne Say of Protestant family forced to moved from Nimes to Geneva in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. One brother, Louis Auguste (1774-1840) was also an economist but Say was intended to follow a commercial career and was sent, with his other brother Horace, to England. Here he lived first in Croydon, in the house of a merchant, to whom he acted as clerk, and afterwards in London, where he was in the service of another employer. When, on the death of the latter, he returned to France, be was employed into office of a life assurance company directed by Etienne Claviere. Say's first literary attempt was a pamphlet on the liberty press, published in 1789. He later worked under Mirabeau on the Courrier de Provence. In 1792 he took part as a volunteer in the campaign of Champagne; in 1793 he assumed, in conformity with the Revolutionary fashion, the pre-name of Atticus, and became secretary to Claviere, then finance the minister. In 1793 Say married Mlle Deloche, daughter of a former lawyer. From 1794 to 1800 Say edited a periodical entitled La Decade philosophsque, Iitteraure, et pohnique, in which he…