1GG HISTORY OF 



" These birds," says Willoughby, " hold the 

 principal place in the feasts and entertainments of 

 princes, without which their feasts are esteemed 

 ignoble, vulgar, and of no account. The French- 

 men do so highly value, and are so fond of the 

 partridge, that if they be wanting, they utterly 

 slight and despise the best spread tables ; as if 

 there could be no feast without them." But how- 

 ever this might be in the times of our historian, 

 the partridge is now too common in France to be 

 considered as a delicacy; and this, as well as 

 every other simple dish, is exploded for luxuries 

 of a more compound invention. 



In England, where the partridge is much 

 scarcer, and a great deal dearer, it is still a fa- 

 vourite delicacy at the tables of the rich ; and the 

 desire of keeping it to themselves has induced 

 them to make laws for its preservation, no way 

 harmonizing with the general spirit of the Eng- 

 lish legislation. What can be more arbitrary than 

 to talk of preserving the game; which, when 

 defined, means no more than that the poor shall 

 abstain from what the rich have taken a fancy to 

 keep to themselves ? If these birds could, like 

 a cock or a hen, be made legal property ; could 

 they be taught to keep within certain districts, 

 and only feed on those grounds that belong to 

 the man whose entertainments they improve, it 

 then might, with some show of justice, be ad- 

 mitted, that as a man fed them, so he might 

 claim them. But this is not the case ; nor is it in 

 any man's power to lay a restraint upon the liber- 

 ty of these birds, that, when let loose, put no 



