SAY, FAMILY. — French economists, the best known of whom was Jean-Baptiste, b. at Lyon on 5 Jan. 1767, d. at Paris on 15 Nov. 1832. After the fall of Napoleon, of whom he had first been a follower and then an opponent, he held various offices under the Bourbons, although he was not favourable to them, and finally, in 1831, was called by the government of Louis Philippe to the first chair of political economy at the Collège de France.
His principal work is the Traité d'économie politique, first printed in 1803, and reprinted only in 1814, after Napoleon had had it sequestered because of its liberal spirit and its opposition to any state intervention in economic activity. In this treatise, he does not merely expound the principles of Adam Smith’s doctrine, of which he was a brilliant populariser in France, but he deepens, completes, and sometimes corrects some of its theories. Rejecting both the physiocratic and Smithian concept of the natural and spontaneous order of economic activity and of science as a normative science of human conduct, he insists that economic science should be purely theoretical and descriptive, like the natural sciences. He also broadens the concept of economic science by including non-material goods, the so-called personal services, which Smith considered unproductive. Above all, he is famous for his “theory of outlets,” according to which, in contrast to Malthus and Sismondi, who feared the dangers of overproduction, he maintained that “products are exchanged for products,” and that “the more numerous the producers and the greater the production, the easier, more varied, and more extensive the outlets become.” Thus fall away the concerns of the mercantilists and, in general, of the protectionists about the balance of trade, i.e., the danger of a nation impoverishing itself through an excess of imports. Because of this vision of the economic organisation of society, the French classical school, initiated by S., is called the “optimistic school.” This optimistic school would later find its most eloquent advocate in Frédéric Bastiat. Other works by S. include: Catéchisme d'économie politique (1815); Cours complet d'économie politique pratique (1828–29), etc.
The other members of the family are of lesser importance. His brother Louis-Auguste (b. at Lyon in 1774, d. at Paris in 1840) wrote: Principales causes de la richesse ou de la misère des peuples et des particuliers (1808); Traité élémentaire de la richesse individuelle et de la richesse publique (1827); Études sur la richesse des nations (1836), etc. His son Horace-Émile (b. at Noisy on 11 Mar. 1794, d. at Paris in Aug. 1860) wrote: Histoire des relations commerciales entre la France et le Brésil (1830), etc.
SBARAGLIA (Sbaralea), Giovanni Giacinto. Historian and bibliographer of the Conventual Franciscans, b. at S. Niccolò della Rotta (Forlì) on 13 Mar. 1687, d. at Rome, at the SS. Apostoli, on 2 June 1764.
A religious from 4 Aug. 1703, he was ordained priest on 5 Apr. 1710. In 1715 he was sent to Rome, where in 1718 he obtained the doctorate and mastership in theology. Returning to Ferrara, he devoted himself to historical and bibliographical studies. He then moved to Florence, Assisi, and Rome (Nov. 1751), where he remained until his death. His scientific ideal, “Non nova sed aliea cribrare... meliora facere,” is evident throughout his published and unpublished scientific output.
It is sufficient to recall among his unpublished works: the Chrono-tavis Romanorum Pontificum; the Opus miscellaneum in revision of the Collectio Conciliorum of Labbe; the Critica Pagii in Annales Baroni; the Supplementum ad Italiam Sacram of Ughelli (preserved in the General Archive of the Conventuals at the SS. Apostoli in Rome). Among his published works, noteworthy are also: Disputatio de sacris pravorum Ordinationibus... (Florence 1750) with various appendices; the monumental edition of the Bullarium Franciscanum from 1218 to 1303 (4 vols., Rome 1759–68); and the Supplementum et castigatio ad scriptores Trium Ordinum S. Francisci a Waddingo aliisque descriptos, which, besides correcting errors, doubles the collection, increasing the number of names from 2,249 to 5,267 (1st ed., posthumous, Rome 1806; 2nd ed., 3 vols., ibid. 1908–36). These last two works, indispensable for Franciscan history, make him the principal representative of critical Franciscan historiography.