The Effects of Salutary Neglect by the British Government on the North American Colonies

The late 1600's issued in an implied policy of abandonment of the colonies by the English government. The removal of royal control allowed colonies to develop political, commercial, and religious institutions almost entirely independent of the social system of England.

Legislative assemblies were created to act as adjuncts of Parliament in the Colonies. The neglect policy adopted allowed assemblies to become complete governmental systems instead. The Massachusetts Bay Company government was based solely on their religion, Puritanism, whose doctrines included purifying themselves of the Church of England and thereby from England itself. A few colonies were created without the permission of the crown, their governments were entirely separate from England. Such was the case with the forming of Connecticut, the colonist of which went so far as to write their own constitution, though they would later be annexed by England anyway. Some colonies began as royal colonies and later became self-governing. In Virginia the Houses of Burgesses was formed to ensure the colonist the full rights of an English citizen. During the time of Sir William Berkeley it morphed into an autocracy, lead by the rich planters of eastern Virginia. The legislative assemblies within America were all bodies autonomous of Parliament, some began this way, others were created for this purpose, and still others simply transformed over time.

English Explorers originally came to the New World to find gold and silver like the Spanish had. However they quickly realized that there was none in the eastern coast of North America. The shortage of hard money, caused by lack of trade, caused impart by the Navigation acts, led to the creation of barter systems, paper money, and monetary substitutes such as fur, as currency within the colonies. The barter system had to be used between colonies whose currency was non-exchangeable. This was often the case in Colonial America. Often times the exchange rate for money was so extreme in different colonies that it was more profitable to simply barter. The currency prevalent in most colonies was paper money. The money was supposed to be representative of the amount of land, or hard money a person possessed. Colonist, who, unless they engaged in trade with other countries, had no new source of gold or silver, more easily obtained paper money. The trade of fur, and other natural resources was the main source of commerce between colonist and the natives. The colonist could take fur for their supplies and then either sold the fur within the colony or exported to other countries. The colonist had few sources of "hard money", the currency of choice in Europe at the time. Their commercial systems, in fact, were either nearly extinct, or had never before practiced in England.

Religion was the most deliberated institution in colonial America. 'Americans' were the main determiners of religion and religious freedoms held within their colonies, exceptional in light of the fact that, at most times, England had an at least pseudo official religion. Several colonies such as Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island practiced religious freedom for all religions. This phenomenon occurred mainly within the middle colonies where other countries had already settled many of the colonies. The English colonist had to create some sort of compromise between cultures. The practice of complete tolerance also helped charter companies bring in more settlers. Some of the colonies practiced limited freedom. These colonies either accepted Christian religions (New York and Delaware,) but not pagan religions; or they accepted Protestants, and non-Christian religions (Georgia.) Religious diversity was tolerated only because of the pre-existing colonies and to gain more settlers. However the charter companies in these colonies exercised some of the prejudices on their colonist anyway. The largest number of colonies (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and New Hampshire) however didn't practice religious toleration. These colonies were set up specifically as havens for particular religious groups and denominations. These were also the colonies the least amount of outsider settlements, making it easier to create a heterogeneous colony. Anglicanism, the official religion of England, was not largely practice within the colonies. The colonies were in fact seen as havens for those English citizens who did not want to practice Anglicanism. Each colony practiced its own level of tolerance towards religion.

Salutary neglect by the English government towards the colonies allowed the American settlers to develop independent of the social mores and structure of their mother country, creating identifiably different political, economic and religious institution.