Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

improper feud

A nonmilitary feud; a feud that is base or servile in nature. "These were the principal, and very simple, qualities of the genuine or original feuds; being then all of a military nature, and in the hands of military persons: though the feudatories, being under frequent incapacities of cultivating and manuring their own lands, soon found it necessary to commit part of them to inferior tenants .... But this at the same time demolished the ancient simplicity of feuds; and an inroad being once made upon their constitution, it subjected them, in a course of time, to great varieties and innovations. Feuds came to be bought and sold, and deviations were made from the old fundamental rules of tenure and succession; which were held no longer sacred, when the feuds themselves no longer continued to be purely military. Hence these tenures began now to be divided into feoda propria et impropria, proper and improper feuds ...." 2 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 57-58 (1766).