ABSTRACT
Links between central authority and madness were somewhat different in England. English institutions were largely 'voluntary' or private establishments, set up by benefactors and subscribers, and removed from direct state supervision.5 The eighteenth century was distinguished by its free 'trade in lunacy',6 and there is little evidence in legal and administrative records of the kinds of politicized definitions of insanity common in France. One major explanation for these differences lies in the radically different nature of the state bureaucracies in the two kingdoms. The governance of post-Restoration England was typified by a devolved localism that made for heterogeneity; by contrast, lunacy administration in France has usually been characterized as part of a large, centralized bureaucracy.7
