COMMONWEALTH

The public or common weal or welfare. This cannot be regarded as a technical term of public law, though often used in political science. It generally designates, when so employed, a republican frame of government one in which the welfare and rights of the entire mass of people are the main consideration, rather than the privileges of a class or the will of a monarch; or it may designate the body of citizens living under such a government Sometimes it may denote the corporate entity, or the government, of a jural society (or state) possessing powers of self-government in respect of its immediate concerns, but forming an integral part of a larger government (or nation.) In this latter sense, it is the official title of several of the United States, (as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts,) and would be appropriate to them alL In the former sense, the word ‘was used to designate the English government during the protectorate of Cromwell. See GOVERNMENT; NATION; STATE. (State v. Lambert, 44 W. Va. 308, 28 S. E. 930.)