8 Metaphors for commonwealths

By 1790 a firm government had been established west of the mountains, and the trans-Alleghany commonwealths had become parts of the Federal Union.

"Nor will he mingle in the affairs of any commonwealth: his commonwealth is not Athens or Corinth, but mankind.

Nobody dreams of treating the fact that the new commonwealths are offshoots of the old as furnishing grounds for any discrimination in reference to them, one way or the other.

Meetings were clandestinely held by the officers;[a] doubts were whispered of the nomination of Richard by his father; and an opinion was encouraged among the military that, as the commonwealth was the work of the army, so the chief office in the commonwealth belonged to the commander of the army.

In this startling conjunction we have the two ages in a nutshell: the Commonwealth was an epic, the Restoration an opera.

Young Caesar, who had paid him much personal deference, was professing himself a patriot; the Commonwealth was safe againand Cicero almost thought that he again himself had saved it.

The mighty and populous commonwealths that lie north of the Ohio and in the valley of the Upper Mississippi are in a peculiar sense the children of the National Government, and it is no mere accident that has made them in return the especial guardians and protectors of that government; for they form the heart of the nation.

The opinion of Aristotle and Grotius that the state originates in the social impulse is false; for man is essentially not social, but selfish, and nothing but regard for his own interests bids him seek the protection of the state; the civil commonwealth is an artificial product of fear and prudence.

8 Metaphors for  commonwealths