Salutary neglect is an American history term that refers to an unofficial and long-term 17th- & 18th-century British policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws, meant to keep the 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
"That 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)Prime Minister Robert Walpole stated that "If no restrictions were placed on the colonies, they would flourish".[1] This policy, which lasted from about 1607 to 1763, allowed the enforcement of trade relations laws to be lenient. Walpole did not believe in enforcing the Navigation Acts, established under Oliver Cromwell andCharles II and designed to force the colonists to trade only with England, Scotland, and Wales, the constituent countries of the British homeland as well as Ireland, then in personal union with Kingdom of Great Britain, as part of the larger economic strategy of mercantilism. Successive British governments ended this non-enforcement policy through new laws such as the Stamp Act and Sugar Act, causing tensions within the colonies.
Salutary neglect occurred in three time periods. From 1607 to 1696, England had no coherent imperial policy regarding specific overseas possessions and their governance, although mercantilist ideas were gaining force and giving general shape to trade policy. From 1696 to 1763, England (and after 1707 the Kingdom of Great Britain) tried to form a coherent policy through the Navigation acts but did not enforce it. Lastly, from 1763 to 1775 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 in 1763. Successive British government passed a number of acts designed to regulate their American colonies including the Stamp Act andQuebec Act. The Quebec Act was not meant to oppress the colonists, but the colonists interpreted it as so because of the Intolerable Acts being passed at the same time.