Are democracies more likely to pursue free trade than autocracies? Turn-of-the-last-century liberals believed that democracies were more likely to engage in trade than absolutist monarchies (Doyle 1986:1161; Thomson 1966:462). “The majority consists of bread eaters,” wrote the French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1862: 102–3). The argument according to which democracy is less bellicose than autocracy does sometimes rest on the assumption that democracy is more prone to commercial intercourse than autocracy. For a criticism of this line of argument, see Gowa (1995: 519). The electioneering work of the Anti-Corn Law League in Britain in the 1840s confirmed English radicals' belief that the franchise would mitigate corruption and rent seeking. However, subsequent history falsified these expectations. The simultaneous moves of autocratic France toward free trade and of democratic United States toward protection confounded any simple association between regime type and trade policy. No one has found a straightforward relation between democracy and trade. With one recent exception. Geoffrey Garrett and Peter Lange (1995) argue that democracies are quicker to adjust to changes in their economic environment than autocracies because of the popular constraint. The present essay revisits the liberals' insight.