Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

or Assembly, took the lead in this self-government with increasing effect.
Although Robert Walpole had been ousted as prime minister in 1742, his
policy of salutary neglect was substantially continued by Newcastle and his
brother Henry Pelham, who succeeded as prime minister the following
year. But, in the absence of the political might of Walpole, the shades
of night were beginning to close on the relations between Britain and the
American colonies. Newcastle, while still powerful in the government, was
succeeded in the post of secretary of state for the South by the aggressive
imperialist John Russell, the Duke of Bedford. But Bedford could do little
harm in the colonies so long as the liberal Lord Monson continued as president
of the Board of Trade. The death of Monson in 1748, coinciding
with the end of the war in Europe, gave Bedford his chance to try to
move toward an end of salutary neglect, and to end the flourishing smuggling
in the American trade. Newcastle attempted to replace Monson
by the latter's brother-in-law, the Duke of Leeds, who, in Newcastle's
words, needed "some office which required little attendance and less application."
Bedford, however, managed to overrule Newcastle, and to install
at the Board of Trade his follower George Dunk, the Earl of Halifax.
Halifax now set about in a determined attempt to bring the American
colonies to heel. For several years, the Board of Trade pressured the higher
authorities with a series of reports deploring the lack of enforcement of the
mercantilist regulations in the colonies, and calling for the replacement
of salutary neglect by enforcement of the laws. Failing to convince Pelham
and Newcastle to change their ways, Halifax tried a power play to have
himself appointed to a new post that he proposed—a separate secretary of
state for the colonies. He failed to achieve this goal, but did manage to
obtain, as sop, slightly enlarged powers over the colonies for the Board of
Trade in 1752. Promptly the board began a persistent campaign to require
the colonial governors to obey its instructions, and to try to wrest from
the Assemblies a permanent revenue for the royal governors and their administration.
The Board of Trade could do little on its own, however, particularly in
the face of determined opposition by the colonial Assemblies. In 1756, the
outbreak of a new war with France forced Halifax to suspend his imperial
activities for the duration. At that point, imperial control over the colonies
was scarcely greater than eight years before, when Halifax had begun his
efforts. But this very failure set the stage for a new and far greater push
for restoration of control over the colonies when the war was over, a push
inspired by increasing fears by the nonliberal forces in Britain that colonial
independence had nearly gotten out of hand.*
*On Halifax's efforts after 1748, see Jack P. Greene, "An Uneasy Connection," in S.
Kurtz and J. Hutson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1973), pp. 68-74.
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