"Salutary Neglect" was a period of time in colonial America before the Revolution, during which the British government was lax in its oversight and regulation of the colonies' trade in order to maximize profits.
The era of Salutary Neglect went from the 1690s to the 1760s. It benefited both the mother country (England) and the colonies in regard to trade and profits. In the mid-1600s, the British passed a number of Navigation Acts that were meant to keep rival European powers, like the Dutch, from trading with the British colonies. But it proved to be beneficial to both the colonies and Britain to be lax in the enforcement of those rules and commerce taxes in dealing with the American colonies.
The policy meant that England took a more hands-off approach to governing its colonies, as long as it was profitable to do so. The policy changed after the French and Indian War, in an effort to deal with war debt that the British government had incurred. The term "salutary neglect" originated from a speech given in Parliament in 1775 by Edmund Burke. Burke was reflecting on the past policy toward the colonies, saying, " 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."
