Jeremiah Dummer - Politics and A Defense of The New-England Charters

Politics and A Defense of The New-England Charters

Arriving back in England in the fall of 1708, Dummer started an important relationship with Henry St. John (later Lord Bolingbroke), a statesman whose secret negotiations with Dummer landed him in trouble upon the death of Queen Anne in 1714. Henry St. John was disgraced and Dummer's plans for a political career in England seemed to have been dashed.

However, Dummer soon gained an important role in the politics of his native New England. Appointed as agent for the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Dummer held this position from 1710 until 1721 and served a similar role for the colony of Connecticut. Dummer was politically aligned with a faction in Massachusetts politics that opposed the creation of a land bank in order to address the ongoing inflationary issuance of paper currency. Upon the death of Queen Anne, the governorship of Joseph Dudley was set to expire, and land bank proponents successfully convinced the Board of Trade to appoint Colonel Elizeus Burges to the governorship. Dummer and co-agent Jonathan Belcher bribed Burges £1,000 to resign his commission without leaving England, and then proposed Colonel Samuel Shute as Dudley's successor, with Dummer's brother William as his lieutenant governor.

Upon his removal from office, Dummer continued to help his native Massachusetts "without pay and without appointment". Dummer's continuing role in New England politics eventually led to his two important literary works. His first work, "A Letter to a Noble Lord concerning the late Expedition to Canada", stated reasons for the expansion into French Canada, as well as why the 1711 expedition to Quebec failed. His other publication, A Defense of the New-England Charters, was an incredibly important work that argued on behalf of the New England colonies.

A Defense of the New England Charters was published in 1721 and defended the charters of New England, composed of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, the colony of Connecticut, Rhode Island, with Providence Plantations, and the Province of New Hampshire. Dummer's work was prompted by a proposed bill for the British House of Commons that would annul the charters of these New England colonies. Dummer sought to illustrate the colonies' loyalty to the crown and their necessity and right to a continuation of the charters with four points that he listed at the beginning of the work:

• " I shall endeavor to show, that the Charter Governments have a good and undoubted Right to their respective Charters"
• " That they have not forfeited them by any Misgovernment or Male-Administration"
• " That if they had, it would not be the Interest of the Crown to accept the Forfeitures. And,"
• " I shall make some Observations upon the extraordinary Method of Proceeding against the Charters by a Bill in Parliament"

Dummer then continued in this vein by explaining the hardships the original settlers faced and how they provided England with valuable resources and service. Dummer states, "And then the Conclusion, that I would draw from these Premises is this, That to strip the Country of their Charters after the Service has bin so successfully perform'd, is abhorrent from all Reason, Equity, and Justice." Dummer justifies the colonial charters by explaining the colonies' worth and continuing loyalty to England, ending the work with a justification for his own zealous arguments on the behalf of the colonies. He states, "Being myself a native of one of them, I could not forbear showing my good-will; for how little soever one is able to write, yet when the liberties of one's country are threaten'd, it's still more difficult to be silent." Dummer's work ended up being "one of the chief influences that defeated the bill" and enabled the New England colonies to keep their charters.