Stock-BROKERS, are those who are employed to buy and sell shares in the joint stock of a company or corporation, and also in the public funds. As the practice of stock-jobbing has been carried to such an excess as became not only ruinous to a great number of private families, but even affected, or at least might soon affect, the public credit of the nation, the legislature thought fit to put a stop to it, or at least to bring it within certain bounds, and under some regulation. The negotiations, &c. of these brokers are regulated by stat. 6. Geo. I. cap. 18. and 7 and 10 Geo. II. cap. 8. which, among other things, enacted, that contracts in the nature of wagers, &c. incur a penalty of 500l. and by the sale of stock, of which the seller is not possessed, a forfeit of 100l. and that brokers keep a book, in which all contracts, with their dates, and the names of the parties concerned, shall be entered, on pain of 100l.