Léon Say

Jean-Baptiste-Léon Say (6 June 1826, Paris – 21 April 1896, Paris) was a French banker, statesman and diplomat. One of the 19th-century's noted economists, he served as French Finance Minister from 1872 until 1883. He also served as an ambassador in London and with an interest in horticulture he presided over the National Horticultural Society of France.

Biography

Say family

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 the United States. 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.