BfRUS. [ 13 



that if they be wanting, they utterly slight and despise the best- 

 spread t.ihles ; as if there could be no feast without them." 

 I3ut however 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 explod- 

 ed for luxuries of a more compound invention. 



In England, where the partridge is much scarcer, and a great 

 deal dearer, it is still a favourite 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 English 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 for themselves ? 

 If these birds could, like a cock or a hen, be made legal pro- 

 perty, could they be tiiught to keep within certain districts, and 

 only feed on those grounds, that belong to the man whose en- 

 tertainments they improve, it then might, with some show of 

 justice, be admitted, 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 liberty of these birds, that, when let 

 loose, put no limits to their excursions. They feed every where; 

 upon every man's ground ; and no man can say these birds are 

 fed only by me. Those birds which are nourished by all, be- 

 long to all ; nor can any one man, or any set of men, lay claim 

 to them, when still continuing in a state of nature. 



I never walked out about the environs of Paris, that I did not 

 consider the immense quantity of game tliat was running almost 

 tame on every side me, as a badge of the slavery of the people ; 

 and what they wished me to observe as an object of triumph, I 

 always regarded with a kind of secret compassion : yet this peo- 

 ple have no game-laws for the remoter parts of the kingdom ; the 

 game is only preserved in a few places for the king, and is free 

 in most places else. In England, the prohibition is general ; 

 and the peasant has not a right to what even slaves, as he is 

 taught to call them, are found to possess. 



Of partridges there are two kinds ; the gray and the red. » 



* Modern ornithologists have ascortaiued many more varieties of part- 

 . aidgfs. The Greek Partridge is more biillcy than tlie red, witli '.vlJcli it 

 iias fri'(}iiently been confounded. 



