Well and good.  But I shall have neighbours about my estate who are jealous of their rights and anxious to encroach on those of others; our keepers will quarrel, and possibly their masters will quarrel too; this means altercations, disputes, ill-will, or law-suits at the least; this in itself is not very pleasant.  My tenants will not enjoy finding my hares at work upon their corn, or my wild boars among their beans.  As they dare not kill the enemy, every one of them will try to drive him from their fields; when the day has been spent in cultivating the ground, they will be compelled to sit up at night to watch it; they will have watch-dogs, drums, horns, and bells; my sleep will be disturbed by their racket.  Do what I will, I cannot help thinking of the misery of these poor people, and I cannot help blaming myself for it.  If I had the honour of being a prince, this would make little impression on me; but as I am a self-made man who has only just come into his property, I am still rather vulgar at heart.

That is not all; abundance of game attracts trespassers; I shall soon have poachers to punish; I shall require prisons, gaolers, guards, and galleys; all this strikes me as cruel.  The wives of those miserable creatures will besiege my door and disturb me with their crying; they must either be driven away or roughly handled.  The poor people who are not poachers, whose harvest has been destroyed by my game, will come next with their complaints.  Some people will be put to death for killing the game, the rest will be punished for having spared it; what a choice of evils!  On every side I shall find nothing but misery and hear nothing but groans.  So far as I can see this must greatly disturb the pleasure of slaying at one’s ease heaps of partridges and hares which are tame enough to run about one’s feet.

If you would have pleasure without pain let there be no monopoly; the more you leave it free to everybody, the purer will be your own enjoyment.  Therefore I should not do what I have just described, but without change of tastes I would follow those which seem likely to cause me least pain.  I would fix my rustic abode in a district where game is not preserved, and where I can have my sport without hindrance.  Game will be less plentiful, but there will be more skill in finding it, and more pleasure in securing it.  I remember the start of delight with which my father watched the rise of his first partridge and the rapture with which he found the hare he had sought all day long.  Yes, I declare, that alone with his dog, carrying his own gun, cartridges, and game bag together with his hare, he came home at nightfall, worn out with fatigue and torn to pieces by brambles, but better pleased with his day’s sport than all your ordinary sportsmen, who on a good horse, with twenty guns ready for them, merely take one gun after another, and shoot and kill everything that comes their way, without skill, without glory, and almost without exercise.  The pleasure is none the less, and the difficulties are removed; there is no estate to be preserved, no poacher to be punished, and no wretches to be tormented; here are solid grounds for preference.  Whatever you do, you cannot torment men for ever without experiencing some amount of discomfort; and sooner or later the muttered curses of the people will spoil the flavour of your game.