Consider these lines: "By 1776, they had been living under the rule of the British government for more than a century, and England had long treated the thirteen colonies with a degree of benign neglect. Each colony had established its own legislature. Taxes imposed by England were low, and property ownership was more widespread than in England." As used in the quoted lines, "benign" most nearly means:

1. Read the sentences after the phrase: colonies ran their own legislatures, taxes were low, property was widely owned. 2. Those details describe a hands-off arrangement that left the colonists comfortable, not one that damaged them. 3. So benign neglect means inattention that did little harm, and benign most nearly means doing little harm. 4. Option B, openly hostile, reverses the tone; hostility is exactly what the low taxes and self-rule rule out. 5. Options C and D read benign as a statement of design or law, but the surrounding details are about mildness. _Source: OpenStax American Government 3e (CC BY 4.0), Ch 2 "The Constitution and Its Origins", section 2.1 The Pre-Revolutionary Period and the Roots of the American Political Tradition_