[ad. F. fédéralisme, f. fédéral: see FEDERAL and -ISM.] The federal principle or system of political organization (see FEDERAL a. 2 a); advocacy of this principle. In U.S. Hist. the principles of the Federal party: see FEDERAL 3 a.
1793. Burke, Policy of the Allies, Wks. VII. 133. We see every man that the Jacobins chuse to apprehend, taken up in his village, or in his house, and conveyed to prison without the least shadow of resistance; and this indifferently, whether he is suspected of Royalism or Federalism, Moderantism, Democracy Royal, or any other of the names of faction which they start by the hour.
1804. Southey, in Ann. Rev., II. 207/1. Federalism would have been too loose a tie; his [Wesley’s] object was to establish a methodist republic, one and indivisible, and to be chief consul of it himself as long as he lived.
1843. Whittier, Democracy and Slavery, Prose Wks. 1889, III. 112. State after state revolted from the ranks of federalism, and enrolled itself on the side of democracy.
1844. Sir J. Graham, in Croker Papers (1884), III. xxiii. 20. In Ireland, that bog where Will o’ the Wisps abound, Federalism, I am afraid, with growing discontent, is gaining ground.
1876. H. C. Lodge, Alexander Hamilton, in N. Amer. Rev., CXXIII., July, 116. The chapter on ‘The Treasury and Federalism.’
