In every free & deliberating society there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties & violent dissensions & discords

From Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 4 June 1798, Philadelphia June 4. 98.Th: Jefferson to J. Taylor.

The discussion starts with various issues around a particular patent but then broadens.  

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 advantages.

The discussion has shifted to the outsized role of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the mercantilist influence, on the new nation.  Jefferson acknowledges this but then argues that in a constitutional republic, there will always be an ebbing and flowing of different sources of power and influence.  That that is the very nature of the beast and were every faction to secede when it is temporarily disadvantaged, there could never be a republic.

No matter how disadvantaged the larger states might feel by the undue influence of Massachusetts and Connecticut, Jefferson counsels that it is a mere temporary condition which will eventually right itself.

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 not events impending which will do it within a few months? The invasion of 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 & deliberating society there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties & violent dissensions & 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 & 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. 

Shrill vested interests and angry ideologues keep insisting that there is extraordinary polarization in the nation.  Exceeding polarization among small factions most desperate to retain their sinecures and privileges perhaps, not among the populace at large.  

As Jefferson reminds us, the interests always seek to stir and use the emotions of the citizenry for their own benefits and there will always be dissensions and divisions within a free society.  That is the nature of a free republic and the nature of free men.