"I am satisfied that I have given the true _laws_ constituting the _Sun_ to be _space_; and I call upon those disposed to maintain the contrary, to give true _laws_ showing him to be a body: until such can be satisfactorily established, I have an undoubted claim to the credit of my theory,--That the Sun is an _Electric Space_, fed and governed by the {42} planets, which have the property of attracting heat from it; and the means of supplying the necessary _pabulum_ by their degenerated air driven off towards the central space--the wonderful alembic in which it becomes transmuted to the revivifying necessities of continuous action; and the central space or Sun being perfectly electric, has the counter property of repulsing the bodies that attract it. How wonderful a conception! How beautiful, how magnificent an arrangement! "O Centre! O Space! O Electric Space!" JOSEPH ADY. 1849. _Joseph Ady_[83] is entitled to a place in this list of discoverers: his great fault, like that of some others, lay in pushing his method too far. He began by detecting unclaimed dividends, and disclosing them to their right owners, exacting his fee before he made his communication. He then generalized into trying to get fees from all of the _name_ belonging to a dividend; and he gave mysterious hints of danger impending. For instance, he would write to a clergyman that a legal penalty was hanging over him; and when the alarmed divine forwarded the sum required for disclosure, he was favored with an extract from some old statute or canon, never repealed, forbidding a clergyman to be a member of a corporation, and was reminded that he had insured his life in the ---- Office, which had a royal charter. He was facetious, was Joseph: he described himself in his circulars as "personally known to Sir Peter Laurie[84] and all other aldermen"; which was nearly true, {43} as he had been before most of them on charges of false pretence; but I believe he was nearly always within the law. Sir James Duke, when Lord Mayor, having particularly displeased him by a decision, his circulars of 1849 contain the following: "Should you have cause to complain of any party, Sir J. Duke has contrived a new law of evidence, viz., write to him, he will consider your letter sufficient proof, and make the parties complained of pay without judge or jury, and will frank you from every expense." I strongly suspect that Joseph Ady believed in himself. He sometimes issued a second warning, of a Sibylline character: