Mr. M. T. Bass represented Derby in Parliament for thirty-five years, being eight times elected in succession, only resigning in 1883, having lived to be the oldest member in the House. He gave Derby a Free Library, a Museum, an Art Gallery, a Public Bath, and a Recreation Ground, at a cost of £50,000. Railway Companies’ servants have reason to be grateful to him, for through his endeavours their hours of labour, though still in some case left far too long, have on many lines been considerably shortened. For some years many of them worked sixteen, eighteen, and even twenty hours out of the twenty-four. He also strenuously exerted himself to obtain the abolition of imprisonment for debt. His benefactions to Burton are too numerous to mention. The chief of them were the gifts of St. Paul’s and St. Margaret’s {345} Churches, with a Parsonage House, Schools, and an endowment of £500 a year, and a Workman’s Club and Institute at a total cost of over £100,000. Mr. Bass was repeatedly offered a Peerage, and as often refused it. We cannot better conclude this short and very inadequate description than by quoting the words used by Sir William Harcourt when opening St. Paul’s Institute at Burton-on-Trent: “We are met here to-day to commemorate the munificent benefaction of Mr. Bass. He is a man advanced in years, in honour, and in wealth, which is the fruit of a life of intelligent industry. He was a Liberal in his youth; he is a Liberal in his age. Years and wealth have not brought to him selfish timidity. In his grey hairs he cherishes the generous sentiments which inspired his earlier days. He has received freely, and freely has he bestowed.” The liberality of the firm was not confined to Mr. Michael Bass. The Messrs. Gretton have erected and endowed a Church in the suburbs of Burton at a cost of nearly £20,000, and Public Baths and Wash-houses, costing nearly £10,000, have been presented to the town by Messrs. Ratcliff. The firm of Bass & Co. alone contribute to the National Revenue upwards of £780 per day, and its breweries at Burton-upon-Trent are the largest of their kind in the world, the business premises extending, as we have said, over 145 acres of land. Locomotives have to a large extent superseded brewers’ drays at Burton, and this firm has connection with the outer railway systems by twelve miles of rails on the premises, and use as many as 60,000 railway trucks in the course of six months. The casks required to carry on the business number 600,000, of which 46,901 are butts, and 159,608 are hogsheads. Some ingenious calculations have been made with regard to these casks. Piled one above another they would make 3,300 pillars, each reaching to the top of St. Paul’s. The great Egyptian Pyramid is 763 ft. square at the base; the butts, standing on end and placed bulge to bulge, would furnish bases for _five_ such pyramids, and the other casks would be more than sufficient for the superstructure 460 ft. high.