Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 02.djvu/211

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BRIGANTES
181
BRIGHT

tries with signal success. In Greece, organized companies of brigands, as distinguished from bands of highway robbers, fortuitously collected, have disappeared; and, in Italy, the chiefs with whom princes made treaties are found only in history. Nevertheless, brigandage is by no means obsolete. In Sicily it is still active at times (see Mafia); and the bands that infest the Turkish frontier are notoriously dangerous to the wayfaring merchant and the defenseless tourist. In 1887 special attention was attracted by the boldness of brigands in the Pyrenees, Tuscany, Servia, Macedonia, Asia Minor, and Mexico.

BRIGANTES, the most powerful of the old British tribes, inhabiting the country between the Humber and the Roman wall.

BRIGANTINE, a sailing vessel with two masts, the foremast rigged like a brig's, the main mast rigged like a schooner's. Called also hermaphrodite brig.

BRIGGS, CHARLES AUGUSTUS, an American clergyman and religious writer, born in New York City, Jan. 15, 1841. In 1874 he was appointed Professor of Hebrew in Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He was tried for heresy in 1892, but was acquitted. In 1899 he formally severed his connection with the New York Presbytery and was ordained a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Among his works are "American Presbyterianism" (1885); "The Messiah of the Apostles" (1886); "The Messiah of the Gospels," "The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch," and "The Bible, the Church, and the Reason"; "Christian Unity" (1909); "Theological Symbolics" (posthumous, 1914). He died in 1913. BRIGGS, FRANK OBADIAH, American Senator; born at Concord, N. H., Aug. 12, 1851. He was graduated from the U. S. Military Academy in 1872, becoming second lieutenant in the Second Regiment of infantry. In 1877 he resigned from the army and settled in Trenton, N. J., joining the John A. Roebling's Sons Co. In 1899 he was chosen mayor of Trenton, in 1901 became a member of the State Board of Education, and in 1902 State Treasurer. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1907, but was defeated in 1912. He died in the following year.

BRIGGS, HENRY, an English mathematician, born near Halifax, Yorkshire, in 1561; studied at St. John's College, Cambridge. In 1592 he was appointed reader of the Physic Lecture founded by Dr. Linacre, and in 1596 first reader in geometry at Gresham House (afterward College), London, and in 1619 first Savilian Professor of Astronomy in Oxford. He made an important contribution to the theory of logarithms, of which he constructed invaluable tables, containing an improvement which was adopted by Napier the inventor. He published his "Logarithmorum Chilias Prima" in 1617, containing the first thousand natural numbers calculated to eight decimal places. He was also the author of a tract on the "Northwest Passage to the South Seas," by way of Virginia and Hudson Bay (1622), and in 1624 he published his "Arithmetica Logarithmica," the fruit of many years of unwearied application. His system of logarithms is that now commonly adopted. He next employed himself on a table of logarithms of sines and tangents, carried to the hundredth part of a degree, and to 15 places, which, with a table of natural sines, tangents, and secants, was printed at Gouda, in Holland, in 1631, and published in London in 1633, under the title of "Trigonometria Britannica." He died in Oxford, Jan. 26, 1631.

BRIGHAM, a city of Utah, in Box Elder co. It is on the Oregon Short Line and the Southern Pacific railroads. It is the center of an important fruit growing and agricultural region. There are canning and cement factories, planing mills, and lumber yards. The city has a public library and other public buildings. Pop. (1910) 3,685; (1920) 5,282.

BRIGHT, JOHN, an English statesman, son of Jacob Bright, a Quaker cotton spinner and manufacturer at Rochdale, Lancashire, born in Lancashire, Nov. 16, 1811. When the Anti-Corn Law League was formed in 1839 he was one of its leading members, and, with Mr. Cobden, engaged in an extensive free-trade agitation. He was incessant, both at public meetings and in Parliament, in his opposition to the Corn Laws, until they were finally repealed. In 1845 he obtained the appointment of a select committee of the House on the Game Laws, and also one on the subject of cotton cultivation in India. A member of the Peace Society, he strenuously opposed the war with Russia in 1854. In 1855 he energetically denounced the Crimean War. Elected in 1857 for Birmingham, he seconded the motion against the second reading of the Conspiracy Bill, which led to the over-