Both Hamilton and Madison were strongly advocating a central government. Throughout their articles they are implying that people are routinely destructive without the strong regulation and constraint of a strong central governing entity. They do not neglect however that large, strong governments are often at war over trade, territory, or simply to appease the citizens' wants. In both atricles, Madison and Hamilton are designating that the U.S is not going to be such a government. Rather, it will be one that avoids war at all costs, and sees to the needs of it's states. They routinely single out Britiain as an example of the tyranny and oppression which a monarchy imposes and denounce the thought of having a king or queen, and rather delegates to each state with a few of those elite being at the top tiers of government. In respone cries for soverignty to each state, Hamilton writes, "the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men and to extinguish those inflammable humours which have so often kindled into wars." He is advocating strong tade relations to other nations in order to avoid going to war against them, and is also describing the conflicts which would ensue if the states were granted total soverignty as nations. Madison describes a similiar governmental developement in which the governments guiding purpose is to protect it's people from both outside forces and from violence within the nation itself. He opens Federalist 10 with, "Among the numerous advantages promised by a well ordered constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than it's tendency to break and control the violence of a faction." He is seeing to the issue of state's rights and truthfully describing the nature of man to impulsively become violent toward an opposing group rather than to solve a dispute in a more civil manner. "factions" are the states themselves, each being it's own, and without the strong connection between them of a central, higher government, there would be chaos.
In "An Anti-Federalist Paper", these points are strongly opposed. It is argued that "These, and an hundred other things of the like kind, though they have gained the hasty assent of men, respectable for learning and ability, are false in themselves, and invented merely to serve the present purpose." This is implying that a federal government superior to the state's government would not perpetually serve the states, and would seek it's own gain instead. Not only this but the author writes," The most rude and artless form of government is probably the most ancient. This we find to be practised among the Indian tribes in America. With them the whole aithority of government is vested in th whole tribe." This form of democratic government is what the federalists were leaning toward, and this author denounces that by increasing the negatives of such a matter, saying that such a government cannot see to individual needs, and rather it attends to the wants and needs of the more influential classes, and the little guy is left out.
All of these issues are common today, maybe to a lesser degree. The argument of such strong central power is still argued with many of the same examples.