In the eighteenth century England had virtually no army and only a handful of administrators in its American colonies: the empire was held together by voluntary compliance, not coercion. One of the reasons the American colonists acquiesced in imperial decisions was that they had an effective way to influence them through London lobbies working on the Americans' behalf. London interest groups spoke and acted on behalf of their colonial correspondents before the ministry, the Privy Council, the Board of Trade and, less often, Parliament; in so doing they gave the colonists an input into imperial decision-making and provided vital information to the government.
