On my way through Paris, both going and returning, I passed some time in the house of M. Say, the eminent political economist, who was a friend and correspondent of my father, having become acquainted with him on a visit to England a year or two after the Peace. He was a man of the later period of the French Revolution, a fine specimen of the best kind of French Republican, one of those who had never bent the knee to Bonaparte though courted by him to do so; a truly upright, brave, and enlightened man. He lived a quiet and studious life, made happy by warm affections, public and private.--J.S. Mill Autopbiography
While reading Evert Schoorl's enlightening intellectual biography, Jean-Baptiste Say: Revolutionary, entrepreneur, economist (Routledge 2013), I learned what Mill is alluding to in the passage above. I quote Say (in a translation originally by, I believe, Evelyn Forget):
During my period as Tribun, not wanting to deliver orations in favour of the usurper, and not having the permission to speak against him, I drafted and published my Traite d'Economie Politique. Bonaparte commanded me to attend him and offered me 40 thousand francs a year to write in favour of his opinion; I refused, and was caught up in the purge of 1804. (quoted in Schoorl 2013: 36)
Schoorl comments: "He also refused the tax collectorship, at a salary of 30,000 francs." (Schoorl 2013: 36)
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