[2][3] Disraeli gained experience and material for his first novel Vivian Grey (1826), in which Powles and his wife appear as Mr and Mrs Millions.
[5] The British government under George Canning decided to recognise the new Latin American nations, created by the rebellion against the Spanish Empire, at the end of 1824.
[8] He weathered the financial storm of the Panic of 1825, and continued with South American mining ventures, and a Gran Colombia loan.
His banker father, of the same name, has been identified tentatively with a director of the Chilean Mining Association with which Powles was involved in the 1820s.
[13] Deas, writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which calls him a "company promoter and speculator", comments that some of his activities "would now be considered fraudulent", though they were not illegal.