Salutary neglect is an American history term that refers to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British Crown policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws meant to keep American colonies obedient to England.
The term comes from Edmund Burke‘s “Speech on Conciliation with America” given in the House of Commons March 22, 1775.
- When I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. (Burke p. 186)
Although many historians believe the British government started to loosen its hold over the colonies around 1690, the period most associated with salutary neglect took place in the mid-1700s.
For most of the 17th century the British government had no official policies in place regarding the colonies. The companies, merchants and independent corporations in the colonies governed themselves with very little supervision from British officials.
Prime Minister Robert Walpole stated that “If no restrictions were placed on the colonies, they would flourish”.
This changed in 1651 when the Navigation Act was passed. It was one of the first laws on trade regulation in the American colonies.The law required that all goods shipped to and from the American colonies had to be carried on English ships.This was an attempt at prohibiting colonists from engaging in trade with other countries except England.
Walpole did not believe in enforcing the Navigation Acts, established under Oliver Cromwell and Charles II . Successive British governments ended this non-enforcement policy through new laws such as the Stamp Act and Sugar Act, causing tensions within the colonies.
Despite passing the Navigation Act, the British government rarely enforced it in the colonies, mostly because it was difficult to do so.
The colonies had ports all along the colonial coastline which would have required the government to send over a large number of customs officials to regulate.
As a result, American colonists ignored the law and continued to smuggle goods and trade regularly with both the Dutch and the French West Indies.
Although it was unenforced, the Navigation Act of 1651 was a contributing factor in the First Anglo-Dutch war of 1652-1654, which was a naval war between the English and the Dutch over North American trade routes and colonial land.
Britain began to try to enforce stricter rules and more direct management, driven in part by the outcome of the Seven Years’ War in which Britain had gained large swathes of new territory in North America at the Treaty of Paris. Successive British governments passed a number of acts designed to regulate Britain’s American colonies including the Stamp Act and Quebec Act. The Quebec Act was not meant to oppress the colonists but was nevertheless widely viewed as oppressive due to the Intolerable Acts being passed at the same time.
The Navigation Act also caused a ripple effect in the colonies when the war it started led to tension in the New England Confederation, an alliance formed between the New England colonies to help bolster colonial defenses. The British government attempted to strengthen its control by revoking the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter as punishment for disobeying its orders and combined all of the New England colonies into one mega colony called the Dominion of New England.
The problem was the mega colony was too large to run effectively and it quickly came to an end in 1689 after news of the Glorious Revolution in England prompted the rebellious colonists to overthrow the Dominion officials.
The new King and Queen of England, Mary and William of Orange, made the Massachusetts Bay Colony a royal colony in 1691 and issued it a new charter with stricter rules than the original charter.
These changes caused a lot of unrest and anxiety in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and many historians believe it was one of the many underlying factors in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
It is believed that Walpole and the Duke of Newcastle were the creators of the salutary neglect policy.
Walpole’s main goal in office was to increase taxable wealth in England to help pay off debts occurred during various wars against Spain and France. Newcastle’s job was to manage commercial relations between England, the British colonies in North America and the Caribbean.
The end of salutary neglect was a large contributing factor that led to the American Revolutionary War. Since the imperial authority did not assert the power that it had, the colonists were left to govern themselves. These essentially sovereign colonies soon became accustomed to the idea of self-control. They also realized that they were powerful enough to defeat the British (with help from France), and decided to revolt. The effects of such prolonged isolation eventually resulted in the emergence of a collective identity that considered itself separate from Great Britain.
To what extent “salutary neglect” constituted an actual neglect of colonial affairs, as the name suggests, versus a conscious policy of the British government, is controversial among historians, and also varies with national perspective. While Americans may side with Burke on the “salutary” effect of this policy, emphasizing the economic and social development of the colonies, it was from a British imperial perspective a momentous failure, and debate remains as to its true social, economic, and political effects.