To Thomas Jefferson from Jean Baptiste Say, 2 November 1803
From Jean Baptiste Say
[before 3 Nov. 1803]
Monsieur
Daignez recevoir l’hommage que je vous fais de mon Traité d’Economie politique, comme une marque de la haute considération que j’ai pour vos qualités personnelles et pour les principes que vous professez. Puissiez-vous y reconnaître quelques traces de cet amour eclairé de l’humanité et de la liberté qui vous rend si recommandable aux yeux des hommes qui pensent bien.
Le bonheur dont jouit votre patrie et qui s’est fort accru sous votre administration, est fait pour exciter l’envie des nations d’Europe; et cependant votre prosperité sera peut-etre la source de la leur. Elles verront le degré de bonheur auquel peut prétendre une societé humaine qui consulte le bon sens dans sa legislation, l’économie dans ses dépenses, la morale dans sa politique; et les conseils de la Sagesse ne pourront plus etre representés comme de pures théories non-susceptibles d’application.
Il vous appartient également de montrer aux amis de la liberté repandus en Europe, quelle étendue de liberté personnelle est compatible avec le maintien du corps social. On ne pourra plus alors souiller par des excès la plus belle des causes; et l’on s’apercevra peut-être enfin que la liberté civile est le veritable but de l’organisation sociale, et qu’il ne faut considerer la liberté politique que comme un moyen de parvenir à ce but.
Les Etats-unis sont enfans de l’Europe; mais les enfans valent mieux que leurs pères. Nous sommes de vieux parens, elevés dans de sots prejugés, garottés par beaucoup d’anciennes entraves et soumis à une foule de considerations pueriles. Vous n/ous montrerez les veritables moyens de nous en affranchir; car vous avez fait plus que conquérir votre liberté. Vous l’avez affermie.
Agréez, Monsieur, les assurances de mon devouement sincere et de mon profond Respect.
J. B. Say
Editors’ Translation
[before 3 Nov. 1803]
Dear Sir,
Please accept my Treatise on Political Economy in homage, as a sign of my high esteem for your personal qualities and the principles you profess. May you find herein some traces of the enlightened love of humanity and liberty for which right-minded people so admire you.
The happiness your country enjoys, and which has so greatly increased under your administration, is justly envied by European nations. Yet, your prosperity may well be the source of theirs. They will see the level of happiness to which a human society can aspire when it brings reason to its legislation, economy to its spending, and morality to its politics. It is no longer possible to depict the path of wisdom as a purely theoretical construct that cannot be implemented.
You also demonstrate to the friends of liberty throughout Europe the breadth of personal liberty that is compatible with maintaining community. People can no longer sully noble causes with excesses. Perhaps they will come to realize that civil liberty is the true goal of society and that political liberty is only a means to that end.
The United States are the offspring of Europe, but the children have more merit than their fathers. We are elderly parents, raised with stupid prejudices, bound by ancient impediments, and subject to puerile ideas. You will show us the right way to free ourselves, for you did more than just conquer your freedom: you affirmed it.
Accept, Sir, the assurance of my sincere devotion and deep respect.
J. B. Say
RC (DLC); undated; addressed: “A Monsieur Jefferson President des Etats-Unis d’Amérique”; endorsed by TJ as received 3 Nov. and so recorded in SJL.
Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832) grew up in Nantes in a Huguenot family with strong connections to Geneva. He became a bank clerk at the age of 15 and three years later went to England, where he worked for a mercantile firm. Returning to France in 1787, he became secretary to Etienne Clavière, who co-wrote De la France et des États-Unis with Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville and corresponded with TJ about aspects of political economy. During his association with Clavière, Say began to write pamphlets and for periodicals. In 1794, he became managing editor of La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique, a new serial associated with the idéologistes (or idéologues) such as Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis and Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy. At Bonaparte’s request, Say put together a collection of books to serve as a traveling library for Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign. In 1800, Say published Olbie, ou Essai sur les moyens de réformer les mœurs d’une nation, which expressed his ideas about improvement of society. Courting the political economists affiliated with La Décade, Bonaparte put Say on the Tribunate, the body that nominally reviewed legislation, but Say realized that the first consul expected him to give sanction to the government’s policies. Say’s two-volume Traité d’économie politique, ou Simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent, et se consomment les richesses was published in Paris in 1803. Disapproving of the coronation of Bonaparte as emperor, Say in 1804 lost his seat on the Tribunate, refused a proffered tax collectorship, and devoted his attention to developing a cotton-spinning factory. Only after Napoleon’s fall would Say’s writings on economics begin to be published again. In 1830, he became a professor of political economy (Evert Schoorl, Jean-Baptiste Say: Revolutionary, Entrepreneur, Economist [London, 2013], 3-14, 23-37; , 577-8, 902-4, 1544; No. 3547; Vol. 10:261-4, 384-5; Vol. 11:9; Vol. 13:281, 319-23, 600-1; Vol. 25:62; Vol. 38:525n).
daignez recevoir l’hommage: TJ replied to Say on 1 Feb. 1804. Ten years later, Say revived the correspondence (, 7:416-21, 598-600; 8:303-8).