In the United States the offence of bribery is very severely dealt with. In many states, bribery or the attempt to bribe is made a felony, and is punishable with varying terms of imprisonment, in some jurisdictions it may be with a period not exceeding ten years. The offence of bribery at elections is dealt with on much the same lines as in England, voiding the election and disqualifying the offender from holding any office.
Bribery may also take the form of a secret commission (_q.v._), a profit made by an agent, in the course of his employment, without the knowledge of his principal.
BRIC À BRAC (a French word, formed by a kind of onomatopoeia, meaning a heterogeneous collection of odds and ends; cf. _de bric et de broc_, corresponding to our "by hook or by crook"; or by reduplication from _brack_, refuse), objects of "virtu," a collection of old furniture, china, plate and curiosities.
BRICK (derived according to some etymologists from the Teutonic _bricke_, a disk or plate; but more authoritatively, through the French _brique_, originally a "broken piece," applied especially to bread, and so to clay, from the Teutonic _brikan_, to break), a kind of artificial stone generally made of burnt clay, and largely used as a building material.
_History_.--The art of making bricks dates from very early times, and was practised by all the civilized nations of antiquity. The earliest burnt bricks known are those found on the sites of the ancient cities of Babylonia, and it seems probable that the method of making strong and durable bricks, by burning blocks of dried clay, was discovered in this corner of Asia. We know at least that well-burnt bricks were made by the Babylonians more than 6000 years ago, and that they were extensively used in the time of Sargon of Akkad (c. 3800 B.C.). The site of the ancient city of Babylon is still marked by huge mounds of bricks, the ruins of its great walls, towers and palaces, although it has been the custom for centuries to carry away from these heaps the bricks required for the building of the modern towns in the surrounding country. The Babylonians and Assyrians attained to a high degree of proficiency in brickmaking, notably in the manufacture of bricks having a coating of coloured glaze or enamel, which they largely used for wall decoration. The Chinese claim great antiquity for their clay industries, but it is not improbable that the knowledge of brickmaking travelled eastwards from Babylonia across the whole of Asia. It is believed that the art of making glazed bricks, so highly developed afterwards by the Chinese, found its way across Asia from the west, through Persia and northern India, to China. The great wall of China was constructed partly of brick, both burnt and unburnt; but this was built at a comparatively late period (c. 210 B.C.), and there is nothing to show that the Chinese had any knowledge of burnt bricks when the art flourished in Babylonia.