Of Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832)Ricardo says "He was the first,or among the first,of Continental writers who justlyappreciated and applied the principles of Smith,and has done more than all other Continental writers taken together torecommend that enlightened and beneficial system to the nations of Europe."The Wealth of Nations in the original languagewas placed in Say's hands by Clavière,afterwards minister,then director of the assurance society of which Say was a clerk;and the book made a powerful impression on him.Long afterwards,when Dupont de Nemours complained of his injusticeto the physiocrats,and claimed him as,through Smith,a spiritual grandson of Quesnay and nephew of Turgot,he repliedthat he had learned to read in the writings of the mercantile school,had learned to think in those of Quesnay and hisfollowers,but that it was in Smith that he had learned to seek the causes and the effects of social phenomena in the nature ofthings,and to arrive at this last by a scrupulous analysis.His Traits d'Économie Politique (1803)was essentially founded onSmith's work,but he aimed at arranging the materials in a more logical and instructive order.(63)He has the French art ofeasy and lucid exposition,though his facility sometimes degenerates into superficiality;and hence his book became popular,both directly and through translations obtained a wide circulation,and diffused rapidly through the civilized world thedoctrines of the master.Say's knowledge of common life,says Roscher,was equal to Smith's;but he falls far below him inliving insight into larger political phenomena,and he carefully eschews historical and philosophical explanations.He issometimes strangely shallow,as when he says that "the best tax is that smallest in amount."He appears not to have muchclaim to the position of an original thinker in political economy.Ricardo,indeed,speaks of him as having "enriched thescience,by several discussions,original,accurate,and profound."What he had specially in view in using these words waswhat is,perhaps rather pretentiously,called Say's théorie des débouchés ,with his connected disproof of the possibility of auniversal glut.The theory amounts simply to this,that buying is also selling,and that it is by producing that we are enabledto purchase the products of others.Several distinguished economists,especially Malthus and Sismondi,in consequencechiefly of a misinterpretation of the phenomena of commercial crises,maintained that there might be general over-supply orexcess of all commodities above the demand.This Say rightly denied.A particular branch of production may,it must indeedbe admitted,exceed the existing capabilities of the market ;but,if we remember that supply is demand,that commodities arepurchasing power,we cannot accept the doctrine of the possibility of a universal glut without holding that we can have toomuch of everythingthat "all men can be so fully provided with the precise articles they desire as to afford no market foreach other's superfluities."Whatever services,however,Say may have rendered by original ideas on those or other subjects,his great merit is certainly that of a propagandist and populariser.
The imperial police would not permit a second edition of his work to be issued without the introduction of changes which,with noble independence,he refused to make;and that edition did not therefore appear till 1814.Three other editions werepublished during the life of the authorin 1817,1819,and 1826.In 1828Say published a second treatise,Cours completd'éonomie Politique pratique ,which contained the substance of his lectures at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers and atthe Collége de France.`Whilst in his earlier treatise he had kept within the narrow limits of strict economics,in his laterwork he enlarged the sphere of discussion,introducing in particular many considerations respecting the economic influenceof social institutions.
Jean Charles L.Simonde de Sismondi (17731842),author of the Histoire des Républiques Italienises dis moyen âge ,represents in the economic field a protest,founded mainly on humanitarian sentiment,against the dominant doctrines Hewrote first a treatise De la Richesse Commerciale (1803),in which he followed strictly the principles of Adam Smith.But heafterwards came to regard these principles as insufficient and requiring modification.He contributed an article on politicaleconomy to the Edinburgh Encyclopeadia ,in which his new views were partially indicated.They were fully developed in hisprincipal econcmic work,Nouveaux Principes d'Économie Politique,ou de la Richesse dans ses rapports avec laPopulation (1819;2d ed.,1827).This work,as he tells us,was not received with favour by economists,a fact which heexplains by the consideration that he had "attacked an orthodoxyan enterprise dangerous in philosophy as in religion."According to his view,the science,as commonly understood,was too much of a mere chrematistic:it studied tooexclusively the means of increasing wealth,and not sufficiently the use of this wealth for producing general happiness.Thepractical system founded on it tended,as he believed,not only to make the rich richer,but to make the poor poorer andmore dependent;and he desired to fix attention on the question of distribution as by far the most important,especially in thesocial circum-stances of recent times.
The personal union in Sismondi of three nationalities,the Italian,the French,and the Swiss,and his comprehensive historicalstudies,gave him a special largeness of view;and he was filled with a noble sympathy for the suffering members of society.
