Answer:Salutary neglect, policy of the British government from the early to mid-18th century regarding its North American colonies under which trade regulations for the colonies were laxly enforced and imperial supervision of internal colonial affairs was loose as long as the colonies remained loyal to the British government and contributed to the economic profitability of Britain. This “salutary neglect” contributed involuntarily to the increasing autonomy of colonial legal and legislative institutions, which ultimately led to American independence.
In the mid-17th century—in pursuit of a favourable balance of trade and of continuing to exploit raw materials from colonies that also served as a market for English manufactured goods—the English government adopted the so-called Navigation Acts. Under the Navigation Act of 1651, all goods exported to England or its colonies had to be transported on English vessels or on ships from the country from which the goods originated. This action prevented England’s great maritime rival, the Dutch, from acting as middlemen in international trade with the English colonies, especially of commodities originating in Africa or Asia. Subsequent acts required that all goods bound for England or English colonies, regardless of origin, had to be shipped only on English vessels and that certain “enumerated articles” from the colonies (which came to include sugar, cotton, and tobacco) could be shipped only to England, with trade in those items with other countries prohibited. Moreover, ultimately, all goods from other countries bound for the colonies or goods from the colonies destined for other countries had to first pass through English ports, where they were subject to customs duties. Those duties elevated the price of non-English goods so that they were prohibitively expensive for the colonists. Vice-Admiralty courts, presided over by judges but lacking juries (which were viewed as overly sympathetic to colonial interests), were established in the colonies to address violations of trade regulations. In 1696 Parliament established the Board of Trade largely with the intention of maintaining even tighter control of colonial trade.
Some historians believe that these tight reins on the colonies had begun to loosen in the late 17th century, but there is no doubt that a sea change occurred with the ascendancy of Robert Walpole as Britain’s chief minister in 1721. Under Walpole (who is generally regarded as Britain’s first prime minister) and his secretary of state, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st duke of Newcastle (who later served as prime minister, 1754–56, 1757–62), British officials began turning a blind eye to colonial violations of trade regulations. Most historians argue that this loosening of the enforcement of the Navigation Acts was primarily the result of a deliberate though unwritten policy—that Walpole was content to ignore illegal trade if the ultimate result was greater profits for Britain. If increased colonial purchases of British goods or goods from other British colonies resulted from colonial prosperity that came about through backdoor trade with France, what was the harm? Moreover, as some historians have noted, to have strictly enforced the regulations would have been much more costly, requiring an even larger body of enforcement officials. Other historians, however, argue that a greater cause of salutary neglect was not deliberate but was instead the incompetence, weakness, and self-interest of poorly qualified colonial officials who were patronage appointees of Walpole. Still other historians blame this lack of poor leadership not on patronage but on the lack of desirability of colonial postings, which tended to be filled not by officials in the prime of their careers but by the new and inexperienced or the old and undistinguished.
