Jean-Baptiste Say entered the world on the 5th of January 1767 in the city of Lyon. His father Jean-Etienne Say came from a Protestant family that had moved from Nîmes to Geneva after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The young boy was destined for a commercial life rather than an academic one. In 1785 he traveled to England with his brother Horace to complete his education. They lodged briefly in Croydon before moving to Fulham following a return visit to France. During this period he worked for two London-based sugar merchant firms named James Baillie & Co and Samuel and William Hibbert. At the end of 1786 he accompanied Samuel Hibbert on a voyage back to France. That journey ended in December when Hibbert died in Nantes. Say returned to Paris where he found work at a life assurance company directed by Étienne Clavière. His brother Louis Auguste would later become an economist as well.
Revolutionary Politics
Say's first literary attempt appeared in 1789 as a pamphlet on the liberty of the press. He subsequently worked under Mirabeau on the Courrier de Provence newspaper. In 1792 he volunteered for the campaign of Champagne during the French Revolution. By 1793 he adopted the pseudonym Atticus while serving as secretary to finance minister Étienne Clavière. From 1794 to 1800 he edited a periodical called La Decade philosophique, litteraire, et politique. This publication allowed him to expound the doctrines of Adam Smith to a wide audience. When the consular government formed in 1799 he became one of the 100 members of the Tribunat. He resigned his editorship of the Decade upon taking this political office. In 1798 he published Olbie, ou essai sur les moyens de réformer les mœurs d'une nation. The year 1803 brought his principal work titled Traité d'économie politique. Napoleon removed Say from his tribune position in 1804 because he refused to compromise his convictions for political gain.