* The following letter was afterwards addressed to the Commissioner by Mr. Fraser:- SULLAM, 18<th January> 1872. W. GUTHRIE, Esq. SIR,-You will perhaps allow me to supplement the evidence gave at Brae the other day by a few notes. I did not bring out all I wished to say on the credit system. It would require more time than could than be allowed to one witness, and more writing than I would like to trouble you with now, to explain it fully.
Credit has become almost a necessity in Shetland in the present condition of the islands and it has gone on so long that the moral ton of society has suffered in consequence of it. The present fish-curers and merchants have not created the system; it existed before them, and they have taken it up as a necessary evil.
Shetland fisherman may be divided into three classes. The first class are free men. They have never been in debt, and hope never to be. The second class, under the present circumstances, come in debt, but they don't like it, and get out of it as soon as they can. The third class do not seem to have any particular dislike to it. When the Commissioner asked me at Brae if I had known men lose their independence by coming in debt, or something like that, I had this class in my mind, and I was puzzled what to say. I think the loss must have been sustained long, long ago, for they have always appeared to me as a party who never had anything of the sort to lose.
The moral evils of the system to this class need not be mentioned. I will name one or two of its physical effects.
1. It largely increases pauperism, by raising a false standard by which to regulate one's expenditure. When one of this class falls from earning, he is fit only for the Parochial Board.
2. In case of a boat accident, or in a season like 1869, the prospect is most appalling. In that year the crop was very largely a failure; many of the people had gone as deep in debt as they could go; and but for the aid sent by the Society of Friends, some of the people would assuredly have died, and a still larger number could not have sown their ground. The timely aid sent by the Friends and those whom they enlisted with them in their benevolent work, prevented both these consequences.
There are not a few families in Shetland-bereaved families, I mean-supported by funds supplied by the benevolence of south country ladies and gentlemen, who otherwise must have starved, or fall with a crushing weight upon the Parochial Boards.
Now, for all this, so far as I know, there is only one remedy- the improvement of the soil. The people are cultivating just the same ground their <great-grandfathers> did, and most of the ground now cultivated has never rested in the memory of living man, or perhaps as long before. New earth is made to supply the yearly waste, and thus the ground in the neighbourhood of a few small farms is so robbed as to be rendered useless for generations, unless it happens to have earth enough to allow of laying down the surface, and a proprietor or factor who binds the people to do it.
There is, in general, plenty of unreclaimed land lying close by these small farms which might be broken up and brought under crop, and some of the old allowed to rest. In some places there are plenty of stones to hedge in a small croft of land where grass might be sown, but nothing is done. That unreclaimed land is made to do duty by keeping life in a few cows-two, or more. During the summer season, the merchant supplies the meal as long as he can, and so things continue its they are. No man who may receive a forty days', or even a six months', warning, is likely to exert himself to bring more ground under crop. The thing wanted is leasehold of the property by the tenant. But I am told the tenants will not take a lease. It may be so; but before the statement be admitted as true, the sort of lease offered them would require to be seen. There are leases offered which no man of common sense would take. There is property in Shetland, and plenty of it, that in a 19 years lease could be made 50 per cent. better than it is, and be a better bargain then, than now. And all this might be done without costing the proprietor one shilling. Let him give it lease on reasonable terms.
There is just one thing more I would like to state. I am referring to the evidence given last year before the Commissioner in Edinburgh, it was then stated by Mr. Walker, that the hills were doing the people no good, and therefore he had taken them from them. The latter part of this statement is true, but on the former part of it I would beg to say, the native sheep reared on these hills supply material for knitting, and the female part of the population are clad almost entirely from that source alone. Then the female members of the house generally provide during the winter months warm underclothing for the fisherman, without which he could not pursue his hazardous occupation. Bedclothes are also largely supplied from the same source. Leave all these to be supplied by the fisherman from his scanty earnings, and it requires no prophet to foretell the result.