It is impossible to separate the question of Truck in Shetland
from the land question - (1.) Because Truck, in the form in
which it chiefly exists, has arisen out of these old relations
between landlords and tenants in the times when the landlords
were the principal or the only purchasers and curers of fish; and
(2.) because, to a very material extent, the relations between the
fish-curer and the fishermen are still subservient and ancillary
to the landlord's security for his rent.* That this is so will appear
from a description of the ling fishery as it now exists.
*<See> General Observations on Shetland, by Lawrence
Edmonstone
M.D., in <New Statistical Account>, p. 160 (Edin. 1841)