Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/70

 58 the antient implicity of feuds; and an inroad being once made upon their contitution, it ubjected them, in a coure of time, to great varieties and innovations. Feuds came to be bought and old, and deviations were made from the old fundamental rules of tenure and ucceion; which were held no longer acred, when the feuds themelves no longer continued to be purely military. Hence thee tenures began now to be divided into feoda propria et impropria, proper and improper feuds; under the former of which diviions were comprehended uch, and uch only, of which we have before poken; and under that of improper or derivative feuds were comprized all uch as do not fall within the other decription: uch, for intance, as were originally bartered and old to the feudatory for a price; uch as were held upon bae or les honourable ervices, or upon a rent, in lieu of military ervice; uch as were in themelves alienable, without mutual licence; and uch as might decend indifferently either to males or females. But, where a difference was not expreed in the creation, uch new-created feuds did in all other repects follow the nature of an original, genuine, and proper feud.

as oon as the feodal ytem came to be conidered in the light of a civil etablihment, rather than as a military plan, the ingenuity of the ame ages, which perplexed all theology with the ubtilty of cholatic diquiitions, and bewildered philoophy in the mazes of metaphyfical jargon, began alo to exert it's influence on this copious and fruitful ubject: in puruance of which, the mot refined and oppreive conequences were drawn from what originally was a plan of implicity and liberty, equally beneficial to both lord and tenant, and prudently calculated for their mutual protection and defence. From this one foundation, in different countries of Europe, very different upertructures have been raied: what effect it has produced on the landed property of England will appear in the following chapters.