This chapter examines how and why the idea of “liberal democracy” was invented by French liberals in the 1860s. I argue that liberal democracy was conceived as an essentially polemical concept, defined in reaction to what French liberals identified as a defective form of democracy – namely, Napoleon III’s “Caesarist democracy.” I also show that, initially, one of the key meanings of liberal democracy was the idea of rule by public opinion. The first theorists of liberal democracy criticized Caesarism as a dangerous combination of plebiscitary sovereignty and silencing of public opinion. Meanwhile, they argued that the exercise of popular sovereignty should be confined to legislative elections, and that a free and independent public opinion should influence both elections and representatives. This perspective was articulated by figures such as Eugène Pelletan, Auguste Nefftzer, Charles Dollfus, Édouard Laboulaye, Anatole Prévost-Paradol and Émile Ollivier. The chapter further explores how the invention of the term “liberal democracy” overlapped with efforts to create a liberal tradition, as well as with a defense of settler colonialism in Algeria.