THOMAS JEFFERSON TO JOHN TAYLOR.

Philadelphia, June 1, 1798.

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Mr. New showed me your letter on the subject of the patent, which gave me an opportunity of observing what you said as to the effect, with you, of public proceedings, and that it was not unwise now to estimate the separate mass of Virginia and North Carolina, with a view to their separate existence.  It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and subsistence.  Their natural friends, the three other eastern States, join them from a sort of family pride, and they have the art to divide certain other parts of the Union so as to make use of them to govern the whole.  This is not new, it is the old practice of despots; to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.  And those who have once got an ascendency, and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage.  But our present situation is not a natural one.  The republicans, through every part of the Union, say, that it was the irresistible influence and popularity of General Washington played off by the cunning of Hamilton, which turned the government over to anti-republican hands, or turned the republicans chosen by the people into anti-republicans.  He delivered it over to his successor in this state, and very untoward events since, improved with great artifice, have produced on the public mind the impressions we see.  But still I repeat it, this is not the natural state.  Time alone would bring round an order of things more correspondent to the sentiments of our constituents.  But are there no events impending, which will do it within a few months?  The crisis with England, the public and authentic avowal of sentiments hostile to the leading principles of our constitution, the prospect of a war, in which we shall stand alone, land-tax, stamp-tax, increase of public debt, &c.  Be this as it may, in every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time.  Perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch and delate to the people the proceedings of the other.  But if on a temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no federal government can ever exist.  If to rid ourselves of the present rule of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we break the Union, will the evil stop there?  Suppose the New England States alone cut off, will our natures be changed?  Are we not men still to the south of that, and with all the passions of men?  Immediately, we shall see a Pennsylvania and a Virginia party arise in the residuary confederacy, and the public mind will be distracted with the same