to highway may be caused by encroachment, by interfering with the soil of the highway, by attracting crowds, by creating danger or inconvenience on or near the highway, by placing obstacles on the highway, by unreasonable user, by offences against decency and good order, &c.
The use of locomotives, motor cars and other vehicles on highways is regulated by acts of 1861–1903.
Formerly under the Turnpike Acts many of the more important highways were placed under the management of boards of commissioners or trustees. The trustees were required and empowered to maintain, repair and improve the roads committed to their charge, and the expenses of the trust were met by tolls levied on persons using the road. The various grounds of exemption from toll on turnpike roads were all of a public character, e.g. horses and carriages attending the sovereign or royal family, or used by soldiers or volunteers in uniform, were free from toll. In general horses and carriages used in agricultural work were free from toll. By the Highways and Locomotives Act of 1878 disturnpiked roads became “main roads.” Ordinary highways might be declared to be “main roads,” and “main roads” be reduced to the status of ordinary highways.
In Scotland the highway system is regulated by the Roads and Bridges Act 1878 and amending acts. The management and maintenance of the highways and bridges is vested in county road trustees, viz. the commissioners of supply, certain elected trustees representing ratepayers in parishes and others. One of the consequences of the act was the abolition of tolls, statute-labour, causeway mail and other exactions for the maintenance of bridges and highways, and all turnpike roads became highways, and all highways became open to the public free of tolls and other exactions. The county is divided into districts under district committees, and county and district officers are appointed. The expenses of highway management in each district (or parish), together with a proportion of the general expenses of the act, are levied by the trustees by an assessment on the lands and heritages within the district (or parish).
Highway, in the law of the states of the American Union, generally means a lawful public road, over which all citizens are allowed to pass and repass on foot, on horseback, in carriages and waggons. Sometimes it is held to be restricted to county roads as opposed to town-ways. In statutes dealing with offences connected with the highway, such as gaming, negligence of carriers, &c., “highway” includes navigable rivers. But in a statute punishing with death robbery on the highway, railways were held not to be included in the term. In one case it has been held that any way is a highway which has been used as such for fifty years.
See Glen, Law Relating to Highways; Pratt, Law of Highways, Main Roads and Bridges.
HIGINBOTHAM, GEORGE (1827–1893), chief-justice of
Victoria, Australia, sixth son of T. Higinbotham of Dublin, was
born on the 19th of April 1827, and educated at the Royal School,
Dungannon, and at Trinity College, Dublin. After entering as a
law student at Lincoln’s Inn, and being engaged as reporter on
the Morning Chronicle in 1849, he emigrated to Victoria, where
he contributed to the Melbourne Herald and practised at the bar
(having been “called” in 1853) with much success. In 1850 he
became editor of the Melbourne Argus, but resigned in 1859 and
returned to the bar. He was elected to the legislative assembly
in 1861 for Brighton as an independent Liberal, was rejected at
the general election of the same year, but was returned nine
months later. In 1863 he became attorney-general. Under his
influence measures were passed through the legislative assembly
of a somewhat extreme character, completely ignoring the
rights of the legislative council, and the government was
carried on without any Appropriation Act for more than a year.
Mr Higinbotham, by his eloquence and earnestness, obtained
great influence amongst the members of the legislative assembly,
but his colleagues were not prepared to follow him as far as he
desired to go. He contended that in a constitutional colony like
Victoria the secretary of state for the colonies had no right to
fetter the discretion of the queen’s representative. Mr Higinbotham
did not return to power with his chief, Sir James
M‘Culloch, after the defeat of the short-lived Sladen administration;
and being defeated for Brighton at the next general election
by a comparatively unknown man, he devoted himself to his
practice at the bar. Amongst his other labours as attorney-general
he had codified all the statutes which were in force
throughout the colony. In 1874 he was returned to the legislative
assembly for Brunswick, but after a few months he
resigned his seat. In 1880 he was appointed a puisne judge of the
supreme court, and in 1886, on the retirement of Sir William
Stawell, he was promoted to the office of chief justice. Mr
Higinbotham was appointed president of the International
Exhibition held at Melbourne in 1888–1889, but did not take any
active part in its management. One of his latest public acts was
to subscribe a sum of £10, 10s. a week towards the funds of the
strikers in the great Australian labour dispute of 1890, an act
which did not meet with general approval. He died in 1893.
HILARION, ST (c. 290–371), abbot, the first to introduce the
monastic system into Palestine. The chief source of information
is a life written by St Jerome; it was based upon a letter, no
longer extant, written by St Epiphanius, who had known
Hilarion. The accounts in Sozomen are mainly based on
Jerome’s Vita; but Otto Zöcker has shown that Sozomen also
had at his disposal authentic local traditions (see “Hilarion von
Gaza” in the Neue Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie, 1894), the
most important study on Hilarion, which is written against the
hypercritical school of Weingarten and shows that Hilarion must
be accepted as an historical personage and the Vita as a substantially
correct account of his career. He was born of heathen
parents at Tabatha near Gaza about 290; he was sent to
Alexandria for his education and there became a convert to
Christianity; about 306 he visited St Anthony and became his
disciple, embracing the eremitical life. He returned to his
native place and for many years lived as a hermit in the desert by
the marshes on the Egyptian border. Many disciples put themselves
under his guidance; but his influence must have been
limited to south Palestine, for there is no mention of him in
Palladius or Cassian. In 356 he left Palestine and went again to
Egypt; but the accounts given in the Vita of his travels during
the last fifteen years of his life must be taken with extreme
caution. It is there said that he went from Egypt to Sicily,
and thence to Epidaurus, and finally to Cyprus where he met
Epiphanius and died in 371.
An abridged story of his life will be found in Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints, on the 21st of October, and a critical sketch with full references in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 3). (E. C. B.)
HILARIUS (Hilary[1]), ST (c. 300–367), bishop of Pictavium
(Poitiers), an eminent “doctor” of the Western Church, sometimes
referred to as the “malleus Arianorum” and the “Athanasius
of the West,” was born at Poitiers about the end of the
3rd century A.D. His parents were pagans of distinction. He
received a good education, including what had even then become
somewhat rare in the West, some knowledge of Greek. He
studied, later on, the Old and New Testament writings, with
the result that he abandoned his neo-platonism for Christianity,
and with his wife and his daughter received the sacrament of
baptism. So great was the respect in which he was held by the
citizens of Poitiers that about 353, although still a married man,
he was unanimously elected bishop. At that time Arianism
was threatening to overrun the Western Church; to repel the
irruption was the great task which Hilary undertook. One
of his first steps was to secure the excommunication, by those
of the Gallican hierarchy who still remained orthodox, of Saturninus,
the Arian bishop of Arles and of Ursacius and Valens, two
of his prominent supporters. About the same time he wrote to
the emperor Constantius a remonstrance against the persecutions
by which the Arians had sought to crush their opponents
(Ad Constantium Augustum liber primus, of which the most
probable date is 355). His efforts were not at first successful,
for at the synod of Biterrae (Beziers), summoned in 356 by
- ↑ The name is derived from Gr. ἱλαρός, gay, cheerful, whence hilarious, hilarity.
