[G.S. Sutherland, 16,805.] It seems to be fairly deducible from this evidence, that cash payments for fish are not impracticable and inexpedient, as some witnesses have said. The condition of fishermen in Wick and the West Highlands shows further that Shetland is not, as has sometimes been thought, a peculiar and exceptional country. Elsewhere also fishermen have crofts, are poor, and in debt; require advances for boats, fishing implements, and provisions; and obtain them from or through the curers to whom they sell their fish. The evidence given before the Select Committee on the Irish Sea Fisheries Bill of 1867 shows that the condition of many fishermen on the Irish coast is worse in regard to indebtedness than that of any in Shetland. The question may then be asked, whether a partial and local remedy should be applied to Shetland, while nothing is done for the fishermen of other districts; and whether it is expedient to pass an Act of Parliament for the protection of a particular trade in a single county, unless it be fully ascertained that its circumstances are materially different from those of the same trade in the rest of the empire. It is for Her Majesty's Government to decide whether it can introduce a measure for the repression of truck, and the regulation of agreements between fishermen and their employers, without having information as to the nature of the present relations between these parties throughout the empire. There is a good deal to lead to the conclusion, if any general conclusion may be formed from a local and partial investigation, that fishermen and fish-curers may fairly be subjected to regulations analogous to those which the Merchant Shipping Act lays down for the engagement of seamen. It is also a point worthy of consideration, whether the prohibition of set-off should not be extended to all dealings between fishermen and fish-merchants, with this exception, that the curer or merchant should be at liberty to retain one third of each week's or month's earnings for payment of any boats or lines supplied to the fishermen by him or on his guarantee. The carelessness or incompetence of fishermen in regard to pass-books and accounts, suggests also the propriety of a limitation of action upon such accounts to three months, with a provision that no acknowledgments shall bar prescription unless holograph, or signed before witnesses. LAND QUESTION. I have not thought myself at liberty to enter upon the land question in Shetland as substantive part of the inquiry; but it is plain that the prevalence of truck is due in no small degree to the habit of dependence, or submission, which the faulty relations between landlords and tenants have fostered. Here, too, however, it may perhaps be said that legislation ought not to be of a local and exceptional character. I may at least be permitted to hope that, in any reform of the land tenancy laws of Scotland, the case of Shetland will not be forgotten.