The total amount of fraud was estimated at £50,000. Telegraphic notices were transmitted to the principal ports of the United Kingdom; the Lord Mayor despatched officers in all directions; the chief sufferers went express to various places, on the chance of detaining him; and every exertion was made to bring to justice the man who had violated every principle of common honesty, and so greatly shaken the honorable confidence of the members of the Stock Exchange. Two thousand seven hundred pounds which he had strangely left at his banker’s, were attached; two hundred guineas were offered for his apprehension; his lodgings were examined, and the property found was seized by the officers of justice. The search was too active not to be successful; and Daniels was discovered in the Isle of Man. Here a new difficulty arose. The Manx laws protected the culprit, the governor’s permission being required to apprehend him; and, when procured, so numerously was the island peopled with men like Daniels, that the officers, afraid of arresting him in open day, took advantage of night to remove their prisoner. The proceeds of the robbery were found; and when his departure was known, the island rose tumultuously at the violation of a right on which the safety of half the population depended. Great excitement was caused by his arrival in England; but, after a careful legal consultation, it was decided that he could not be convicted on any criminal charge; and Joseph Elkin Daniels escaped the legal penalty of that fraud which gave so severe a shock to the members of the Stock Exchange. In the same year, it was ascertained that the amount of foreign property in the British funds was twenty-two millions; and it is scarcely out of place to mention, that, by some patient calculator, it was found that one guinea invested at the Christian era, at five per cent., compound interest, would have increased to a greater sum than could be contained in five hundred millions of earths, all of solid gold. In the early part of the present century an attempt was made to resist the tax paid to the city, of forty shillings per annum, by stock-brokers, as unreasonable and unjust. Various members of the body refused to pay; the corporation and the brokers were at issue; and, in 1805, a hundred summonses were applied for, though a few only were granted, to test the disputed right. Among these was one to Francis Baily, who undertook the championship; and from the conviction that the claim was unjust, refused in the above year to pay the sum demanded. As the justice, though not the law, is yet doubted by some, a brief retrospect of the various acts affecting brokers may not be out of place. The act of 8 and 9 William III., c. 32,—alluded to in an earlier part of the volume,—was the first that could affect stock-brokers, as in that reign they and their misdeeds began to flourish. The following forms a portion of the preamble to the act:—