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The term "commonwealth" is used interchangeably with the term "state" in the Constitution of Vermont, [11] but the act of Congress admitting that state to the Union calls it "the State of Vermont." Delaware was primarily referred to as a "state" in its 1776 Constitution; however, the term commonwealth was also used in one of its articles. [12]
The term literally meant "common well-being". In the 17th century, the definition of "commonwealth" expanded from its original sense of "public welfare" or "commonweal" to mean "a state in which the supreme power is vested in the people; a republic or democratic state". [3] [4] The term evolved to become a title to a number of political entities.
The term, commonwealth, which refers to a state in which the supreme power is vested in the people, was first used in Virginia during the Interregnum, the 1649–60 period between the reigns of Charles I and Charles II during which parliament's Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector established a republican government known as the Commonwealth of ...
The Commonwealth of Nations, often simply referred to as the Commonwealth, [4] is an international association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire from which it developed. [2] They are connected through their use of the English language and historical-cultural ties.
The term "Dominion" remained in informal use for some years when relating to newly independent territories and was sometimes used to refer to the status of former British territories during an immediate post-independence period while the British monarch remained head of state, and the form of government a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy.
A 21st-century edition of the Act Declaring and Constituting the People of England to be a Commonwealth and Free-State enacted on 19 May 1649. For the first two years of the Commonwealth, the Rump faced economic depression and the risk of invasion from Scotland and Ireland. By 1653 Cromwell and the Army had largely eliminated these threats.
A state can be distinguished from a government. The state is the organization while the government is the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy that controls the state apparatus at a given time. [50] [51] [52] That is, governments are the means through which state power is employed.
A state government is the government that controls a subdivision of a country in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonomy, or be subject to the direct control of the federal government. This relationship may be defined by a ...