Antoine Jay

Antoine Jay (20 October 1770, Guîtres – 9 April 1854, Courgeac) was a French writer, journalist, historian and politician.

At first an Oratorian at Niort, he studied law at Toulouse then became a lawyer, then briefly worked as the administrator of the district of Libourne. He travelled to Canada and the United States between 1795 and 1802 to escape the French Revolution, making friends with Thomas Jefferson and teaching French to Lemuel Shaw.

From 1803 to 1809, he was tutor to the sons of Joseph Fouché, before serving as a civil servant in the Ministry of Police, where he translated English newspapers. He contributed to the Journal des Voyages and L'Abeille, participated in the foundation of Constitutionnel and La Minerve française, and edited the Journal de Paris. He was an influential opposition journalist, who had supported the French Revolution and First French Empire (serving as a deputy in the Chambre of the Hundred Days and favouring the handover of Napoleon to the Allies after Waterloo), opposing the Bourbon Restoration and finally seeing the triumph of his political ideal in the July Revolution. He was mayor of Lagorce (1830–1848), conseiller général for the Gironde (1831–1837) and deputy for the Gironde (1815, 1831, 1834).

...
Wikipedia