e Constitution's designers were in fact intent on establishing a strong central power. This was in marked contrast to the previous Articles of Confederation, which established a truly weak and fragmented system, and which proved so defective that they were scrapped less than two decades after they were enacted (Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, n.d.; see introduction by Edward Mead Earle).
It is true that the framers of the Constitution did their work in the face of wide public opposition to strong central government -- the Federalist papers were written precisely to address this opposition (Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, n.d.; see introduction by Edward Mead Earle). However, the Federalist does not bury its objectives. Federalist Numbers 10, 17 and 18, for example, are clear in asserting that central government is more trustworthy than local government (Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, n.d.). Small republics, these essays argue, are always at risk of faction -- of powerful local interest groups or individuals. Large republics, such as the federal government was intended to be, are seen as less subject to this risk, due to the sheer range of interests at play within them (Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, n.d.). Although not explicitly stated, there is also the implication that a large political entity more readily develops its own institutional perspective and force. As Garry Wills has pointed out in A Necessary Evil (1999), the framers of the Constitution were designing a strong government, not a weak one.
There is no direct evidence in the Federalist that the authors had ever read Machiavelli. If they had, they would certainly never have said so, since then as now his name is associated in the popular imagination entirely with The Prince, not the Discourses. Yet much in the Constitution is more suggestive of Machiavelli's emphasis on active contest and interplay of political power as a key to republican strength, than of more passive,...