Introduction : the puzzle -- Interests, ideas and institutions simplified : a demand- and supply-side perspective -- The demand side : the league, the landowners, and free trade ; Lessons in lobbying for free trade : to concentrate or not ; Nationalizing the interest in free trade ; The waning demand for protection : portfolio diversification of landowners ; Votes in Parliament, dissected into ideology, party, and interests -- The supply side. Conservatives who sounded like trustees but voted like delegates ; Repeal in historical context : key Parliamentary debates on the corn laws before 1846 ; Free trade's last hurdle : why the lords acquiesced ; Feeling the heat of the league? : how local newspapers affected MPs' voting on repeal ; Concluding thoughts on repeal and the road to democratic reform in nineteenth-century Britain.