In August, 1856, the Act which did so much good expired. Parliament refused to continue it on the express promise of parties connected with the coal trade, that a model office should be created, which should be conducted in such a manner that the publicans should not be able to renew the hideous evil of the old system. THIS CONTRACT WITH PARLIAMENT HAS BEEN BROKEN, and at this moment the coal-whippers are suffering from a return to the fearful slavery and tyranny of old times. Already one-third of the trade is again in the hands of the publicans. The first thing the model office did was immediately to throw 252 coal-whippers out of employment. Of course these men were necessitated to go to the publicans. Another complaint against the model office is, that in two cases the men were paid 2d. a ton, and in another case 3d. a ton, less than the price paid to the office. Another grievance is, instead of the persons connected with the coal trade going to the model office, the _bonâ fide_ offices created by the Act, and by means of which it was abused, still exist, and we were informed one of the largest merchants has still his office with a gang of eighty-one men. Of course the publicans are delighted. They have the whole trade in their own hands again; but this must not be. The righteous feeling of the country must be interposed between the publican and his victims—a body of hard-working men are not to be forced into drunkenness and poverty and crime merely that a few publicans may increase their ill-gotten gains. Reason, morality, religion, all protest against such a damnable doctrine. Almost immediately after the Act had ceased, the Rev. Mr. Sangar, the rector of Shadwell, presided over a meeting of coal-whippers “because the coal-whipped office was established in his parish, and because the Coal-whippers’ Act had put down drunkenness, prevented the exactions of middlemen, induced morality, and benefited a large number of industrious men.” Meetings for a similar purpose are held almost every month. On similar grounds we have taken up the case of the coal-whippers—and for the same reasons we ask the aid of the charitable, and religious, and humane. Especially do we ask the temperance societies of the metropolis to interfere in this matter. Many of the coal-whippers are total abstainers. Now that Mr. Gladstone’s Act is obsolete, they have some of them been forced back into the public-house. We must save them ere they be lost for ever. The coal-whippers are in earnest in this matter. They want very little. Simply a renewal of Mr. Gladstone’s Act, with the proviso that there shall be only one office. It was the absence of that proviso that enabled interested parties to evade the provisions of the Act to a certain extent. Surely this is no great boon for Parliament to grant. THE STOCK EXCHANGE.