Burke, to one of "salutary neglect." The
neglect was, indeed, by no means complete. Information was assiduously
gathered; many new laws were passed; the number of officials greatly
increased, and governors more carefully instructed; colonial statutes,
more consistently inspected, were more often annulled. Yet it is true
that for three decades after the Peace of Utrecht no attempt was made to
transform the commercial code into a colonial system. And even the
commercial code was administered in "a gentlemanlike and easy-going
fashion: little was embitered and nothing solved."

Of many circumstances which contributed to this result, the effect of
the Revolution on English politics was fundamental. Kings who ruled by
grace of a statute, instead of by divine right, inevitably lost
administrative as well as legislative authority. Colonial policy was
therefore no longer determined, as in Stuart times, by the king in
council, but by the ministers; by ministers who might listen to the
Board of Trade, but could not take advice unless it squared with the
wishes of the Parliament that made them. When, in 1715, Secretary
Stanhope appointed George Vaughan, an owner of sawmills in New
Hampshire, to be lieutenant-governor of that province, the Board of
Trade protested; and quoted, in support of its protest, the remarks of
Bellomont about Mr. Partridge. "To set a carpenter to preserve woods,"
said Bellomont, "is like setting a wolf to guard sheep; I say, to
preserve woods, for I take it to be the chiefest part of the business of
a Lt. Governor of that province to preserve the woods for the king's
use." The protest was ignored; and for thirty years, while the Board of
Trade fell almost to the level of a joke, the colonies were managed by a
Secretary of State who was likely to be less interested in preserving
the woods for the king's use than in advancing the interests of the Whig
oligarchy which governed England.

It could not well have been otherwise. The Whig oligarchy, having driven
the Stuarts from the throne, was bound to identify the welfare of the
empire with the maintenance of the House of Hanover. Convinced that so
long as there was peace and plenty in the land Jacobite exiles would
wait in vain for the day when the body of James II, lying unburied in
the church of St. Jacques, might be restored to English soil, ministers
labored to make the nation loyal by making it comfortable. It was
therefore necessary to guard with jealou