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noun
Commonwealth  n.  
1.
A state; a body politic consisting of a certain number of men, united, by compact or tacit agreement, under one form of government and system of laws. "The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth." Note: This term is applied to governments which are considered as free or popular, but rarely, or improperly, to an absolute government. The word signifies, strictly, the common well-being or happiness; and hence, a form of government in which the general welfare is regarded rather than the welfare of any class.
2.
The whole body of people in a state; the public.
3.
(Eng. Hist.) Specifically, the form of government established on the death of Charles I., in 1649, which existed under Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard, ending with the abdication of the latter in 1659.
Synonyms: State; realm; republic.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Commonwealth" Quotes from Famous Books



... corruption and folly, and by a clear, strong call of noble-minded men to a new way of life in which a great people believing in the honor and honesty of its leadership and in fair reward for good labor shall face a period of poverty with courage, and co-operate unselfishly for the good of the commonwealth, inspired by a sense of fellowship with the workers of other nations. We have a long way to go and many storms to weather before we reach that state, if, by any grace that is in us, and above ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... Dr. Petty was sent to Ireland as physician to the army of the Commonwealth. While there his active mind observed that the Survey on which the Government had based its distribution of fortified lands to the soldiers had been "most inefficiently and absurdly managed." He obtained ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... government, whereof a great many are hollow, and dry, and empty, and noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation. This is the Leviathan from whence the terrible wits of our age are said to borrow their weapons. The Ship in danger is easily understood to be its old antitype the commonwealth. But how to analyse the Tub was a matter of difficulty, when, after long inquiry and debate, the literal meaning was preserved, and it was decreed that, in order to prevent these Leviathans from tossing and sporting with the commonwealth, which of itself is too apt to fluctuate, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... regular, systematic, and extensive plan. Their ships were constantly at sea: all commerce was interrupted; with their 1000 galleys—for so numerous were they—they exercised a complete sovereignty over all the coasts of the Mediterranean. They formed themselves into a kind of commonwealth, selected magistrates and officers, who appointed each fleet its respective station and object, and built watch-towers, arsenals, and magazines. They depended chiefly on Cilicia for the necessary supplies for their ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... sojourn in Flanders, Charles was carefully watched by the secret service officers of the Commonwealth Government, who sent home reports of all he did. These reports, many of which are in the Thurloe State Papers and other collections, contain some curious details ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond

... wonderful clerical garments of which he alone possesses the pattern, which made him look like a Chaucer Canterbury Pilgrim or a figure out of a Noah's ark. They swaggered down the roadway talking energetically. At tea we talked of many things, the future of the "Commonwealth" ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... with the Confederate States government, and had gone to Danville. Supposing I was necessarily with the army at Burkesville, he addressed a letter to me there informing me that, as governor of the Commonwealth of the State of Virginia, he had temporarily removed the State capital from Richmond to Danville, and asking if he would be permitted to perform the functions of his office there without molestation by the Federal authorities. I give this letter only ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... forces of society. At the same time they were required to be disciples of St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Thomas had a very large element of political liberalism. He believed in the Higher Law, in conditional allegiance, in the illegitimacy of all governments that do not act in the interest of the commonwealth. This was convenient doctrine in the endeavour to repress the forces of Protestantism, and for a time the Jesuits were revolutionists. The ideas of 1688, of 1776, of 1789 prevail among them from the wars of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... a superb girl of twenty as I overtook her one winter morning hurrying along Commonwealth Avenue. She spoke of a brilliant party at a friend's the previous evening. "But, oh!" she cried, throwing up her hands in a kind of hopeless impatience, "tell me what to do. My dancing days are over!" I laughed at her, "Have you sprained ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer

... and go, but France remains. All who fall for her bequeath to her their own glory, and her splendor is made up of their worth. Happy is he who enriches the commonwealth by the complete gift of himself. Happy then the child of France whose superhuman destiny we are celebrating! Glory be to him in the heavens where he reigned supreme, and glory be to him on the earth, in our soldiers' hearts and in these flags, sacred ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... through the window, Hiram Hanway caused him to be appointed page in the State Senate. There, for eight years, he lived in the midst of all that treason and mendacity and cowardice and rapacity and dishonor which as raw materials are ground together to produce laws for a commonwealth. He learned early that the ten commandments have no bearing on politics and legislation, and was taught that part of valor which, basing itself on greed and cunning and fear, is called discretion, and consists in first running from ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... respectively the Commonwealth, the City, the Supreme Bench, the University, the American Academy, the Historical Society, the Public Library, the Union Club, and the United States Army and Navy. The officers of the Army and Navy highest in rank on this station ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... your command wear the usual badge of mourning for thirty days. I shall at once place myself at the head of affairs here, and am now ready to entertain any suggestions which you may make, looking to the better enforcement of the laws in this commonwealth. The militant Democrats on the other side of the river appear to be contemplating extreme measures. They have two large cannons facing this way, and yesterday morning, I am told, some of them came down to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... municipality, if not that of the commonwealth," replied Colonel Broadcastle firmly, "demands that an immediate stop be put to this lawlessness. We are dealing ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... in good odor during the days of the Commonwealth; for he lived long enough to see that bitter tragedy of the executed king before Whitehall Palace, and to hold over to the early years of the Restoration. But he was not in favor with the people about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... perseverance of those who are under none of these disadvantages, and with whom I now co-operate, make it reasonable for me to act the same part. Further than this no shadow of duty obliges me to go. Plato ceased to act for the Commonwealth when he ceased to persuade, and Solon laid down his arms before the public magazine when Pisistratus grew too strong to be opposed any longer with hopes ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... awakens a more lively hatred than centralization and State power. The vast extent of small industry, with the apprentice, journeyman, and master-workman, has wielded an influence over the mentality of the French workers. Berth, for instance, follows Proudhon in conceiving of the future commonwealth as a federation of innumerable little workshops. Gigantic industries, such as are known in Germany, England, and America, seem to be problems quite foreign to the mind of the typical Latin worker. He believes that, if he can be left alone in his little industry, and freed from exploitation, he, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... Moderator, to consider the spiritual welfare of the church, and of one especial soul connected with the church. This soul is—is far from grace; it is in a lost condition; a stranger to God, an alien from the commonwealth of Israel. But that is not all. No. It is—ah—spreading its own disease of sin in the vitals of the church. It is not only going down to hell itself, but it is dragging others along with it. It is to consider the welfare of that soul, Brother Ward, that this Session has been convened. ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... to it that free Cuba be a reality, not a name, a perfect entity, not a hasty experiment bearing within itself the elements of failure. Our mission, to accomplish which we took up the wager of battle, is not to be fulfilled by turning adrift any loosely framed commonwealth to face the vicissitudes which too often attend weaker States whose natural wealth and abundant resources are offset by the incongruities of their political organization and the recurring occasions for internal rivalries to sap their strength and dissipate their energies. The greatest ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... be able to secure what you want from H. B. Wassel, Esquire, Commonwealth Building, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He has advertised the sale of a ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood

... rapidly displacing the mansions of the last century, he looks with honest pride upon Boston's crowning glory, the gilded dome which, like a great golden egg, is nested upright upon the roof which shelters the annually-assembled wisdom of the Old Commonwealth. Around its glowing swell the orbit of the sun's kiss is marked by an ever-moving flame, and even its shadows ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... aided the Peruvians in gaining their independence and was declared their liberator and made supreme dictator of the country. After ruling there absolutely for two years, he resigned and gave the country a republican constitution. The congress of Lima elected him president for life, and a new commonwealth was organized in the northern section of Peru, to which the people gave the name of Bolivia, in honor of the winner of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... voters, 'for a pleasant man has come out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by a joker of jokes, and he shall talk his pleasant talk to thee, and thou shalt be no more!' In order that America may take its due rank in the commonwealth of nations, a literature is needed which shall be the exponent of its higher life. We live in times of turbulence and change. There is a general dissatisfaction, manifesting itself often in rude contests and ruder speech, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... natural resources are no longer to be had for the asking. It is entirely possible, of course, that the promise can never be kept,—that its redemption will prove to be beyond the patience, the power, and the wisdom of the American people and their leaders; but if it is not kept, the American commonwealth will no longer continue to ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... while the spirits of all parties in the state, broken by the variety of their dangers and toils, were still enfeebled; while the clang of trumpets was ringing in men's ears, and the troops were still distributed in their winter quarters, the storms of angry fortune surrounded the commonwealth with fresh dangers through the manifold and terrible atrocities of Caesar Gallus:[1] who, when just entering into the prime of life, having been raised with unexpected honour from the lowest depth ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... alliance against all wars whose beginners are unwilling to submit their cause to the common judgment of mankind. Such an open treaty of defense would practically condemn and cancel all secret treaties for offensive war as treasonable conspiracies against the commonwealth ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke

... guerres, et c'est un sujet plus que suffisant de prendre les armes contre quelque Village quand il refuse de satisfaire par les presents ordonnez, pour celuy qui vous aurait tue quelq'un des vostres."—Brebeuf, on the Hurons.] The founders of the Iroquois commonwealth decreed that wars for this cause should not be allowed to rise between any of their cantons. On this point a special charge was given to the members of the Great Council. They were enjoined (in the figurative language ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... Rump, or Commonwealth, which so much abhorred persecution, and were for liberty of conscience, made an order that all ministers should keep certain days of humiliation, to fast and pray for their success in Scotland; and that we should keep days of thanksgiving for their ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... Winthrop have left journals which are more than chronicles of adventure. They record the growth and government of a commonwealth. Both Bradford and Winthrop were natural leaders of men, grave, dignified, solid, endowed with a spirit that bred confidence. Each was learned. Winthrop, a lawyer and man of property, had a higher social ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... cloud of bigotry and ignorance which overspread the nation during the commonwealth and protectorship, there were a few sedate philosophers, who, in the retirement of Oxford, cultivated their reason, and established conferences for the mutual communication of their discoveries in physics and geometry. Wilkins, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... man," as Dr "Yark" used to say—when there came a turn in the tide of the affairs of Micawber, he took it at the flood, and it led on to fortune. He became a hardworking settler, a pioneer—a respected early citizen and magistrate in this bright young Commonwealth of ours, ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... Under the Commonwealth the royal monuments suffered no harm; their dilapidations date (as we have said) from Henry VIII's time. The mother, sister, and favourite daughter of Cromwell were buried here; the great Protector himself was interred in the august Chapel ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... and land thieves;" he knew not, however, that there be likewise water devils as well as land devils—water lawyers as well as land lawyers—water swindlers as well as land swindlers. In one small liquid drop you shall behold them all—indeed a commonwealth of Christians but for their forms, and for the atmosphere in which they live and fight. I have often found great instruction in noting the hypocritical antics of a certain watery rascal, whose trick it is to lie in one snug corner of the globule, feigning repose, indifference, or sleep. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her duty, to strike the keynote of these United States. I am glad, for one reason, that remarks such as those to which I have alluded have been uttered here. The passage of these resolutions, in spite of this opposition, led by the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, will show more clearly, more decisively, the deep indignation with which ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... Chancellor. * * The consideration which he disdained to accept from party or from power in the House, his conduct has won from the great mass of his countrymen out of it. We speak the plain and simple truth when we say—and that not for the first time—that at no period of our history since the era of the Commonwealth has any one Englishman contrived to fix so many eyes upon him as Lord Brougham has ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various

... the rich ones that have never been drained, estimates the advantages to be derived by Lower Virginia alone at $500,000,000. "The strength, physical, intellectual, and moral, as well as the revenue of the commonwealth, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... is a copy of the Oregon ballot, from which it appears that the stricken people of that commonwealth were called upon at the late election to consider 32 legislative propositions. Small wonder that it was well onto a month after election before the returns were ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... Britain her CAMDEN: Cicero, who had preserved Rome from the conspiracy of Catiline, was banished: CAMDEN, who would have preserved Britain from a bloody civil war, removed." The historian will add, probably, that "those who brought desolation upon their land, did not mean that there should be no commonwealth, but that right or wrong, they should continue to controul it: they did not mean to burn the capitol to ashes, but to bear absolute sway in the capitol:—The result was, however, that though they did not mean to overthrow the state, yet they risqued all, rather than be overthrown themselves; ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse

... or nationality. These separate states or incipient nationalities were united at the commencement of the present century by the craft of statesmanship which made the shores of the new continent the frontiers of a national commonwealth. The British communities in Australia bred and exhibited the usual Saxon sense of race discrimination; almost from the first they drew a racial frontier between themselves and the native blacks, and so strictly has this frontier been maintained that there is no trace of the vanishing aboriginal ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith

... ideas with all the authority of a great daily newspaper, I felt that I, too, was somebody in the world of affairs, and that though I might live in modest lodgings and possess but narrow means, I was not without a distinct place and influence of my own in the great commonwealth. Such are the illusions of the youthful leader-writer— foolish, perhaps, but ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... with such problems, and how their blundering resulted in the independence of the United States. The lesson of 1776 has not been forgotten, as the history of England's conciliatory policy toward Canada and the Australasian commonwealth abundantly testifies. Lord Tennyson's verses, written in the year of the Queen's jubilee, give expression to the altered relation of the mother-country toward her ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... at a time when divines were proclaiming "the detestable sin of Usury," prohibited by God and man; but the Mosaic prohibition was the municipal law of an agricultural commonwealth, which being without trade, the general poverty of its members could afford no interest for loans; but it was not forbidden the Israelite to take usury from "the stranger." Or they were quoting from the Fathers, who understood ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... and decision, the demoniac competitors again assembled before their imperial arbiter; not this time in secret conclave, but in the presence of thousands of congregated fiends, who, having been apprised of the new plan about to be presented for peopling the Commonwealth of Hell with recruits from earth, had come up in all directions from their dismal abodes, to hear those plans reported, and witness the awarding of the prize for the one judged most worthy of adoption. ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... School he graduated at Harvard College, and on proposing a thesis for his second degree, as college custom required, he defended the proposition that "it is lawful to resist the supreme authority, if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved." Like questions had been debated during the Middle Ages from the time returning Crusaders brought back with them copies of Aristotle and other great Greek philosophers whose authority was still reverenced at Byzantium and Bagdad when London and Paris knew nothing of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... conveying waste and morbid matter to the excretory channels of the body. Other cells manufacture chemical substances, such as sugar, fats, ferments, hormones etc., for the production of which man requires complicated factories. Still others act as policemen and soldiers which protect the commonwealth against bacteria, ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... one had been refused admission into the corps. Their arms were as various in construction as their costumes. There were muskets and rifles and pikes and matchlocks, and pistols which had been used at Culloden, and some even, I fancy, in the civil war of the Commonwealth, while a few even had contented themselves with pitchforks, scythes, and reaping-hooks. The officers were as independent as to uniformity as the men, and not less picturesque, though more comfortably dressed. Each man had exercised his own taste ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... following words met her eye: "This is to certify that I, Hiram Maxwell, of Mason's Corner, in the town of Eastborough, county of Normouth, and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, hereby declare my intention to ask Miss Amanda Skinner of the village, town, county, and state aforesaid, to become ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... the house of Stuart, which remained unshaken amid the overthrow of the monarchy and the triumph of its enemies. When the British Commons had brought the unhappy King to the block, Berkeley denounced them as lawless tyrants and pledged his allegiance to Charles II. And when the Commonwealth sent ships and men to subdue the stubborn Governor, they found him ready, with his raw colonial militia, to fight for the prince that England had repudiated. Throughout his life his chief wish was to win the approbation of the King, his greatest ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... court. They drew the public attention to the exhausted state of the treasury. They maintained that he had possessed too long the estate in Norway, which might be given to men who laboured more usefully for the commonwealth; and they accused him of allowing the chapel at Rothschild to fall into decay. The President of the Council, Christopher Walchendorp, and the King's Chancellor, were the most active of the enemies of Tycho; and, having poisoned the mind of their ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... at the age of fifty-seven was beheaded for fidelity to conscience, on the 6th of July, 1535. He was, like Southey, a man of purest character, and in 1516, when his age was thirty-eight, there was published at Louvain his "Utopia," which sketched wittily an ideal commonwealth that was based on practical and earnest thought upon what constitutes a state, and in what direction to look for amendment of ills. More also withdrew from his most advanced post of opinion. When he wrote "Utopia" he advocated absolute ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... avail little as far as the mine was concerned. It must still remain in escrow as the bond of Harry until the case was decided, and that might mean years. And one cannot borrow money upon a thing that is mortgaged in its entirety to a commonwealth. In the aggregate, the outlook was far from pleasant. The Rodaines had played with stacked cards, and so far every hand had been theirs. Fairchild's credit, and his standing, was ruined. He had been stamped by the coroner's jury as the son of a murderer, and ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... extortioners, at all events they were strangers; they had not been preying on their own kinsmen. But this man was son of a brave old emigrant Governor; he had been bred by the bounty of Harvard College; he had been welcomed at the earliest hour to the offices of the Commonwealth, and promoted in them with a promptness out of proportion to the claims of his years. Confided in, enriched, caressed, from youth to middle life by his native Colony beyond any other man of his time, he had been pampered into a power ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... to so keep himself before the public in his performance of the office, as to make it a stepping stone to something much higher—the city comptrollership, or a seat in the State Senate, or in Congress, or (who could tell?) the governorship of the commonwealth—that grand possibility which every ward politician carries in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... Judge, but our fashion is so divers, that they which give the deadly stroke, and either condemn or acquit the man for guilty or not guilty, are not called judges, but the twele men. And the same order as well in civil matters and pecuniary, as in matters criminal." Smith's Commonwealth of England, ch. 9, p. 53, ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... to help them. And in his own land, what a contrast! Three years before, the wedge of free silver had split the State in twain. Into this breach had sprung that new man with the new political method that threatened disaster to the commonwealth. To his supporters, he was the enemy of corporations, the friend of widows and orphans, the champion of the poor—this man; to his enemies, he was the most malign figure that had ever thrust head above the horizon of Kentucky politics—and so John Burnham ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... social and political conditions more than with those purely religious. It may be pertinent to remark that the passing of a hundred years since the divorce of Church and State and the reforms of a century ago have brought to the commonwealth some of the same deplorable political conditions that the men of the past, the first Constitutional Reform Party, swept away by the peaceful revolution ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... able to recur to the straight road; of ever more regaining his own self-esteem, or the respect of virtuous citizens—forced, as he seemed to be, to play a neutral part—the meanest of all parts—in the impending struggle—of ever gaining eminence or fame under the banners of the commonwealth; he dreamed of giving himself up, as fate appeared to have given him already up, to the designs of Catiline! He pictured to himself rank, station, power, wealth, to be won under the ensigns of revolt; and asked ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... sphere of human relationships, whether in home or neighbourhood or business or municipality or commonwealth, what is lacking is not the knowledge of what the kingdom of God requires, but the will and motive and power to accomplish it. We are not short of knowledge; rather we are weighed down by the power ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot

... Refugee French brethren in England and Ireland (1688). Then his sons emigrated to Virginia, and became settled ministers. From this stock alone, including his son-in-law, Mr. Maury, have descended hundreds of the best citizens of that commonwealth—ministers, members of the bar, legislators, and public officers. The Rev. Dr. Hawks estimates the relations of these Fontaine families, in the United States, at not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... glass for fan-lights. Our guardian (she has assumed the office) makes a significant motion with her left hand, which she moves backward, places her right upon the porcelain knob, turns to the right, and puts her ear inquiringly to the door. "It's a sort of commonwealth; yes, sir, a commonwealth-but then they are all gentlemen-some very distinguished," she continues, shaking her head as if to caution us. Voices in loud conversation are heard in the room to the right, while from out the left ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... home. Cardinal Manning, in his address at the temperance congress recently held in England, says: "As the foundation they laid deep in the earth was the solid basis of social and political peace, so the domestic life of millions of our people is the foundation of the whole order of our commonwealth. I charge upon this great traffic nine-tenths of the misery and the destroyed and wrecked homes of our joyless people." What is true in England is also true in our young country. The "Boys' Homes" and "Girls' Homes" in our large cities furnish ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... animadverted on the different notice taken by all succeeding times, of the two great projectors, Cataline and Caesar. Both formed the same project, and intended to raise themselves to power, by subverting the commonwealth: they pursued their design, perhaps, with equal abilities, and with equal virtue; but Cataline perished in the field, and Caesar returned from Pharsalia with unlimited authority: and from that time, every monarch of the earth has ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... this gaping wound always stand open in the soil of Rome? or could it in any way be filled and the offended deities who had caused it be propitiated? From the oracle came the reply that it must stand open till that which constituted the best and true strength of the Roman commonwealth was cast as an offering into the gulf. Then only would it close, and thereafter forever would the state live ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... From his Epistolae, s.v.—'Milton.' Apparently a somewhat loose recollection from memory of a passage in 'The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth,' &c. (1659-60), commencing 'It may ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... thriftless race who bestowed it. He pawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged his property for the same cause, and lost the greater part of it by fines and sequestration: stood a siege of his castle by Ireton, where his brother Thomas capitulated (afterwards making terms with the Commonwealth, for which the elder brother never forgave him), and where his second brother Edward, who had embraced the ecclesiastical profession, was slain on Castlewood tower, being engaged there both as preacher and artilleryman. This resolute old loyalist, who was with ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... he never came a thousand miles within controversy. He was studiously courteous to the servants at the castle, who had regarded his coming with absolute terror; he calmed and gentled the timid old earl, and drew him out to tell stories of the days of the Commonwealth, when one of Cromwell's troopers pulled the minister out of the pulpit of the Abbey kirk, and held forth himself on the sins both of Prelacy and Presbytery, declaring that he was as good a priest as any man. Claverhouse made no objection when the minister ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... it, from friend and from foe alike. Her love of peace, her love of the Union, were set down now to cowardice, now to cunning. The Mother of States and Queller of Tyrants was caricatured as Mrs. Facing-both-ways; and the great commonwealth that even Mr. Lodge's statistics cannot displace from her leadership in the history of the country was charged with trading on her neutrality. Her solemn protest was unheeded. The "serried phalanx of her gallant sons" that should "prevent the passage ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve

... the bonfire of theology; and our Janus turned his political face. He edited Milton's voluminous politics, and Harrington's fantastical "Oceana," and, as his "Christianity not Mysterious" had stamped his religion with something worse than heresy, so in politics he was branded as a Commonwealth's-man. Toland had evidently strong nerves; for him opposition produced controversy, which he loved, and controversy produced books, by which ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... Sir Richard Weston's "Discourse of Husbandrie used in Brabant and Flanders, shewing the wonderful improvement of land there, and serving as a pattern for our practice in this Commonwealth." Lond. 1645, 4to. 24 pages. Mr. Weston, in his interesting Catalogue, says, "It is remarked in the Phil. Trans. that England has profited in agriculture to the amount of many millions, in consequence of the Flanders husbandry having been made known by this little treatise. ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... believe they have definitely abandoned their old ambition of creating in South Africa a United States independent of the British Crown, and have accepted that other political ideal which is represented by the Dominion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia. At any rate, no people have a greater right to claim respect on the ground of their loyal adherence to treaty engagements than the people of the Orange River Colony; for every one knows that it was with a most faithful adherence to their engagements, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... embryo politicians of congenial notions; and the conversion of the former to one of the sects which had grown out of the old creeds, that, under Cromwell, had broken the sceptre of the son of Belial and established the Commonwealth of Saints, had only strengthened the republican tenets of the sour fanatic. Ardworth called on Braddell, and was startled to find in his schoolfellow's wife the niece of his benefactor, Sir Miles St. John. Now, Lucretia had never divulged her true parentage ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... human victims and to whom practice had given dexterity, advanced from the crowd and thrust a sacred spear into the victim's side, piercing his heart. From the manner in which the slain man fell, omens were drawn as to the welfare of the commonwealth. Then the body was carried to a certain spot where all the people stood upon it as a purificatory ceremony. This last circumstance clearly indicates that the sins of the people were transferred to the victim, just as the Jewish priest transferred the sins of the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... King-Bench, the late Master of the Rolls, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Natives of Ireland, formed a Triumvirate, whose Learning, Worth, and distinguished Abilities, had rendered them eminently respectable in the brightest AEras, either of the Roman Commonwealth, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... of worthy persons being far more complex, and more easily concealed. The right of restraint, vested in those who labor, over those who would impede their labor, is as absolute in the large as in the small society; the equal claim to share in whatever is necessary to the common life (or commonwealth) is as indefeasible; the claim of the sick and helpless to be cared for by the strong with earnest self-sacrifice, is as pitiful and as imperative; the necessity that the governing authority should be in the hands ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... man must be constructive, if his influence is to be felt and to endure. "Politicians," he said in 1880, "we all of us here in England are and must be, and I too cannot help being a politician; but a politician of that commonwealth of which the pattern, as the philosopher says, exists perhaps somewhere in Heaven, but certainly is at present found nowhere on earth." In 1887, describing himself as "an aged outsider," he thus stated his ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... the north; his sudden investiture of Thebes; the assault; the calm deliberations in respect to the destiny of the city, and the slow, cautious, discriminating, but inexorable energy with which the decision was carried into effect, all coming in such rapid succession, impressed the Grecian commonwealth with the conviction that the personage they had to deal with was no boy in character, whatever might be his years. All symptoms of disaffection against the rule of Alexander instantly disappeared, and did ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... was a mighty factor in the settlement growth and development of Minnesota. I feel safe in saying that during the palmy days of steamboating, more than one thousand different steamers brought emigrants, their household goods and stock to this commonwealth. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... with a statement to the effect that whatever a man may do, there is an eye that sees him, a memory that registers and retains. In the Republic he declared that afflictions are blessings in disguise. But his "Republic," a utopian commonwealth, was not, he said, of this world, adding in the Phaedo, that few are chosen ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... of heathen races is full of instances where men have laid down their lives for the love of their kind, of their country, of truth, nay, even for simple manhood's sake, or to show their obedience or fidelity. What would not such beings have done for the souls of men, for the Christian commonwealth, for the King of Kings, if they had lived in days of larger light? Which seems to you nearest heaven, Socrates drinking his hemlock, Regulus going back to the enemy's camp, or that old New England divine sitting comfortably in his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... declined, became a power independent of the state, and a menace to its existence. In Italy, by the end of the fifth century, the great system of citizenship, with its principle of infinite devotion to the good of the commonwealth, was all but forgotten. In matters of justice and of finance the nobles were beginning to live by their own law, which was that of the right of the strongest. Having ceased to hold office and perform public services in the municipia, they ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... to Mr. Forster on one of his books on the Commonwealth, the "Impeachment of the Five Members;" which, as with other letters which we are glad to publish on the subject of Mr. Forster's own works, was not used ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... ages, they have learned the great principles of the division of labor and of profit sharing towards which mankind are now clumsily stumbling; the great work which their societies are able to do is accomplished by a complete specialization of function and a perfect share in the commonwealth. So far has this elaboration gone, that in the bees the work of reproducing the kind is allotted to forms which do no labor; all the work of the hive being effected by individuals which are sterile, ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... bet that the Trade has made more money out of Bryce's American Commonwealth than it ever did out of all ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... illustrated by the following telegram which appeared in The Times for April 5, 1922, from its Melbourne correspondent: "A deputation of shipwrights and allied trades complained to Mr. Hughes, the Prime Minister, that four Commonwealth ships had been repaired at Antwerp instead of in Australia, and that two had been repaired in India by black labour receiving eight annas (8d.) a day. When the deputation reached the black labour allegation Mr. Hughes jumped from his chair and turned on his interviewers with, 'Black labour ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... family. Beastly creature, I know not what to do with him. Travel, quotha; ay, travel, travel, get thee gone, get thee but far enough, to the Saracens, or the Tartars, or the Turks—for thou art not fit to live in a Christian commonwealth, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... Governor of Massachusetts, in his message presenting the Southern documents to the Legislature, said: "Whatever by direct and necessary operation is calculated to excite an insurrection among the slaves has been held, by highly respectable legal authority, an offense against this Commonwealth which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law." Governor Marcy of New York, in a like document, declared that "without the power to pass such laws the States would not possess all the necessary means for preserving their external relations of peace among themselves." ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy

... his mangled body, over which the more fortunate shall pass to victory and glory,' so among the early descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers many an one 'regarded himself as devoted to the King Eternal, ready in his hands to be used to illustrate and build up an eternal commonwealth, either by being sacrificed as a lost spirit, or glorified as a redeemed one; ready to throw, not merely his mortal life, but his immortality even, into the forlorn hope, to bridge, with a never-dying ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... back to the time when Mr Joseph Chamberlain was in office; when Imperialism, Free Trade and Yellow Labour were the catch words of a party, and before the great Australian Commonwealth ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... backbone of the South. This man had just begun to fight! His race had defied the Crown of Great Britain a hundred years from the caves and wilds of Scotland and Ireland, taught the English people how to slay a king and build a commonwealth, and, driven into exile into the wilderness of America, led our Revolution, peopled the hills of the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... inestimable goodnes and grace of Almighty God wee be delivered and brought in childbed of a Prince, conceived in most lawfull matrimonie between my Lord the King's Majestie and us; doubtinge not but, for the love and affection which ye beare unto us, and to the commonwealth of this realme, the knowledge thereof should be joyous and glad tydeings unto you, we have thought good to certifie you of the same, to th' intent you might not onely render unto God condigne thanks and praise for soe greate a benefit but alsoe continuallie praie for the longe continuance and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various

... many of these mad fellows, for the country was full of them, some being disbanded soldiers of the Commonwealth, some ministers who had lost their benefices; but this fellow seemed more crazy than any I had seen: though, indeed, I must confess there was a full measure of truth, if not of charity, in the description ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... moral misgivings which might have clouded the beauty of the gorgeous tropical night. The Captain read a service of his own composition full of legal whereases and aforesaids and containing one reference to the laws of the Commonwealth of the State of Massachusetts which struck me as rather far-fetched but which under the circumstances I decided to ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... his wife and son's welfare; but—and he suddenly turned to Katherine, as if she had been conscious of his thoughts—"The war will not last very long, dear heart; and when liberty is won, and the foundation for a great commonwealth laid, why then we will buy a large estate somewhere upon the banks of this beautiful river. It will be delightful, in the midst of trees and parks, to build a grander Hyde Manor House. Most completely ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... convinced yourself. Spell out your problems slowly; they are not easy ones; try to see how the present complex system works; try to probe its inequalities and injustices; try to compare it with the ideal commonwealth: and you'll find the light in the ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... v. Moulton, 3 N.H., 156, remarked that "the Court, without knowing it, repealed nearly two hundred years of history."[8] In like manner, it may be said that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, in a decision recently made, has falsified the juridical history of this Colony, Province, and Commonwealth for more than two hundred years. We refer to its opinion in the divorce suit of Robbins v. Robbins, printed, with the briefs of counsel, in 1 New England Reporter, 434, and, without the briefs of ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... of the sensible, and count the competent, we can not leave out the name of William Penn. He was the founder of the City of Philadelphia, and of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and gave name and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... upon them, if the means are placed betimes in their hands; and the officers of the army and navy certainly have not to reproach themselves, as a body, with official failure to represent the dangers, the exposure, and the needs of the commonwealth. It should be needless to add that circumstances now are greatly changed, through the occurrences of last year; and that henceforth the risks from neglect, if continued, will vastly exceed those of former days. The issue ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... an officer of militia, Callomb was a Kentuckian, interested in the problems of his Commonwealth, and, when he went back, he knew that his cousin, who occupied the executive mansion at Frankfort, would be interested in his suggestions. The Governor had asked him to report his impressions, and he meant ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... is the only place in the world that owes its title to bad spelling. The settlers who followed Atwood there were numerous enough to form a township after ten years, and the name they decided on for their commonwealth was Orangetown, so called for a village in Maryland where some of the people had associations, but the clerk of the town meeting was not a college graduate and his spelling of Orange was Orring, and of town, ton. His draft of the resolutions ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... another subject in view, which is the contrast of the former history: the one a poor, warlike, virtuous republic, which emerges into glory and freedom; the other a commonwealth, soft, opulent, and corrupt; which, by just degrees, is precipitated from the abuse to the loss of her liberty: both lessons are, perhaps, equally instructive. This second subject is, The History of the Republic of Florence under the House of Medicis: a period of one hundred ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... Rome, Pope and all inclusive, are a shabby attempt at something adequate to fill the place of the old Commonwealth. It is easy enough to live among them, and there is much to amuse and even interest a spectator; but the native existence of the place is now thin and hollow, and there is a stamp of littleness, and childish poverty of taste, upon all the great Christian buildings I have seen here,—not excepting ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... nature of things there are, however, very great difficulties in attempting such a definition. It is significant that no precise definition of indecency exists either in the principal Act or so far as we are aware in the legislation of any other Commonwealth country. ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie

... conceptions; the peculiar history and jurisprudence of the people must have tended powerfully in the same direction. Accordingly, as might have been expected from the circumstances of the nation, it appears in point of fact on the whole face of the Scriptures, that as the institutes of the commonwealth were symbolical, the language of the people was figurative. They were at home in metaphor. It was their vernacular. The sudden and bold adoption of physical forms in order to convey spiritual conceptions, did not surprise—did not puzzle them. "Ye are the salt of the earth," "Wheresoever ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... members of the legislature of Kentucky recommended Henry Clay "as a suitable person to succeed James Monroe as President." A "joint meeting of the Republican members of the Massachusetts legislature and of Republican delegates from the various towns of the Commonwealth not represented in the legislature" nominated John Quincy Adams for the Presidency in January, 1823. And finally, illustrative of the varied methods in use and of the strange vicissitudes of politics at this time, a public gathering or mass meeting at Fredericksburg, ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... treasonable organizations and notoriously disloyal men, whose influence was exerted to discourage enlistments and retard the enforcement of the draft. Unfortunately, in time of civil war, besides the great exigencies which arise to threaten the commonwealth, innumerable lesser evils gather like flies about an open wound, to annoy, irritate, and kill. Against these the law has made no adequate provision. The military must, therefore, often interpose for the public good, without waiting ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... the old boys of the set he has been with. Judges, mayors, Congress-men, Mr. Speakers, leaders in science, clergymen better than famous, and famous too, poets by the half-dozen, singers with voices like angels, financiers, wits, three of the best laughers in the Commonwealth, engineers, agriculturists,—all forms of talent and knowledge he pretended were represented in that meeting. Then he began to quote Byron about Santa Croce, and maintained that he could "furnish out creation" in all its details from that set of his. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)



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