Salutary neglect

The term salutary neglect (English, German " salutary neglect " ) refers to the unofficial policy of the British government towards its colonies in North America in the first half of the 18th century.

The British colonies in North America, whose importance has been growing in the Empire with its rapid population growth in the 18th century, remained in the government years Robert Walpole and largely left beyond themselves. Although the trade about by the adopted from 1651 Navigation Acts was partly regulated, but the colonists were largely spared from direct taxes and contributions. Among the exceptions of the Molasses Act was one of the year 1733, which introduced a high import duty on foreign molasses, but he was the one designed primarily as a protective tariff and less of an increase in customs revenue; he was already so systematically circumvented by corruption and smuggling that it seemed almost as self-evident soon.

To what extent these circumstances, a reckless disregard of colonial affairs represented, as the name suggests, however, or a conscious policy of the British government, is controversial among historians and also varies with the national perspective; while American historians with Burke that emphasize " salutary " effect of this policy on the economic and social development of the colonies, it represents of a British imperial perspective a momentous failure

The end of salutary neglect coincided with the end of the Seven Years' War, when the British government of Lord Bute (1762-1763) and George Grenville (1763-1765) began more to regulate the politics and economy of the colonies from London, at least to relieve the disastrous public finances. Already the first attempts to tax the colonists, notably the Sugar Act 1764 and the Stamp Act in 1765, but fierce resistance in the colonies provoked and mark the beginning of the American Revolution.

The term " salutary neglect" was coined only in retrospect by Edmund Burke. In his speech before the House of Commons on 22 March 1775 relative to the colonies, it says:

" That I knowthat the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and thatthey 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 synthesis effects, When I See how profitable theyhave 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. "