Although payment in goods, or in account, of work done with the merchants' wool may be held to be an offence under the existing law, the custom of barter has so long existed in Shetland, and is so thoroughly interwoven with the habits of the people, that the question has never been raised in the local courts, and it does not even appear to have occurred to merchants that they might be held to infringe the law. In regard to both branches of the trade, the sale or barter of the knitted articles, and the employment of women to knit them, evidence has been freely given by the merchants themselves. In both branches of the trade, it is the custom and understanding of the country, from Unst to Dunrossness, that payment shall be made in goods. Formerly money payment was never thought of. Of late, however, the custom of giving a portion of the payment in cash has, according to Mr. Laurenson and other merchants, been increasing. But this alleged increase is, I think, so slight as to be hardly worth mentioning, except in regard to the very highest class of articles. These the merchants are anxious to get, and the women who knit them have learned to demand payment of the whole or a portion of the price in money. There are few knitters, however, of this class, and some of them sell their work out of Shetland. An effort was made by some merchants to show that money had, in some cases, been paid for hosiery; but the few cases in which sums of any amount were so paid, and the smallness of the payments (3d., 6d., and 1s.) which, in all but one or two exceptional cases, appear in the women's accounts, only prove how strictly the rule is observed that all hosiery transactions are to be settled in goods. The cases are too numerous to be specified in which women say that they never get money, because it is a thing the merchants never give, and that they never ask for it; or that they asked for it once, and being refused, did not apply again. I give a single example. Margaret Williamson says: '8314. Do you always get goods for your knitting?-Yes; I get goods, because I can get nothing else.' '8315. Do you want to get money?-I hardly ever ask for money. I asked for a penny the last time out of 35s., and they refused to give it to me. I bought all that I could buy out of the work I had taken in, and when it came to the last penny I asked for it, but they would not give it. That was at Mr. Linklater's.' '8316. What did he say he would give it in: sweeties?-No; they would not keep any sweeties for fear of having to give them.' '8317. What did they give you?-They gave me the penny at length, but they said we must take goods.'