So far as I am aware the Statutes of Henry III and Edward I, under which these culprits were punished, constitute the earliest official attempts to repress speculation by law. After the Revolution, the Bank of England having been organized and bank shares created, a speculative outburst occurred that led to the enactment of fresh legislation entitled “An act to restrain the numbers and ill practices of brokers and stock-jobbers,”[78] but this law lapsed or was repealed ten years later. In 1707 a law was passed licensing brokers and making it unlawful for unlicensed brokers to do business,[79] and in 1708 City rules were established for brokers, obliging them to give bonds for the proper performance of their duties. In 1711, 1713, and 1719, laws were enacted similar to the Act of 1707. Then came the speculative schemes of 1720, of which the most famous or infamous was the South Sea Company, designed to make fortunes for its shareholders in the slave-trade and in whale fishing. It was followed by many other projects almost fantastic in their wildness to each of which the public subscribed liberally. Where all the money came from that kept this disastrous speculative mania alive is something one would like to know. There seems to have been no limit to it. South Sea shares stood at 120 in April of 1720; in July they had reached 1020, and, after that, the collapse. The company became a “bubble,” and a burst one at that--and a great popular outcry followed. It resulted, in 1734, in the passage of Sir John Barnard’s “Act to Prevent the Infamous Practice of Stock-Jobbing,” the preamble reciting: “Whereas, great inconveniences have arisen, and do daily arise, by the wicked, pernicious, and destructive practice of stock-jobbing, whereby many of His Majesty’s good subjects have been and are diverted from pursuing and exercising their lawful trades and vocations to the utter ruin of themselves and their families, to the great discouragement of industry, and to the manifest detriment of trade and commerce.” This act forbade bargains for puts and calls, and also “the evil practice of compounding or making up differences”; but its principal provision was the prohibition of short selling under penalty of £100 for each transaction. There was, of course, an appeal to the courts, which held that the statute did not apply to foreign stocks nor to shares in companies, but only to English public stocks, a decision that effectually put an end to the usefulness of the law. It remained on the statute books, however, and it was occasionally resorted to by persons who sought to evade the fulfillment of their speculative contracts--a class of persons known to-day as “welchers.”