Léon Say

Jean-Baptiste-Léon Say (6 June 1826, Paris – 21 April 1896, Paris) was a French statesman and diplomat.

One of the 19th-century's noted economists, he served as French Finance Minister from 1872 until 1883.

The Say family is a most remarkable one. His grandfather Jean-Baptiste Say was a well-known economist. His brother Louis-Auguste Say (1774–1840) was a director of a sugar refinery at Nantes who wrote several books on economics; his son, Horace-Émile Say (1794–1860), Léon Say's father, was educated at Geneva, before travelling in America. After returning to Paris, he then established himself in business later becoming President of Paris Chamber of Commerce in 1848; his acclaimed study of industrial conditions in Paris earned him a seat at the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 1857.

Léon Say was thus imbued with a zeal for economic study and theory, which first emerged at the age of twenty-two with his brief Histoire de la caisse descompte. Having initially been destined for the Law, he became a banker and then was appointed as an executive for the Chemins de fer du Nord. Meanwhile, he was a regular contributor to the Journal des débats, growing his reputation through a series of brilliant attacks on the financial administration of Baron Haussmann, Prefect of the Seine.

He displayed a particular talent for engaging popular audiences in economic questions. His sympathies, like those of his grandfather, lay with the British economics school of thought, and he established a reputation as a proponent of free-trade principles for France. As a fluent English speaker, well acquainted with its customs and institutions, Say translated into French Goschen's Theory of Foreign Exchanges.

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