A final image, a third rebus, is appropriate. Adam Smith...wrote that the work of slaves was dearer to their masters than that of freemen, and he condemned slavery as an intolerable obstacle to human progress. Yet he was fully aware of the enormous profits of the sugar plantations--particularly in Barbados and Saint-Domingue--despite the fact that all the work was done by slaves. Was it not, then, a case of disavowal that Smith's only weakness was consuming lumps of sugar? An eyewitness recalls:
'We shall never forget one particular evening when [Adam Smith] put an elderly maiden lady who presided at the tea-table to sore confusion by neglecting utterly her invitation to be seated, and walking round and round the circle, stopping ever and anon to steal a lump from the sugar basin, which the venerable spinster was at length constrained to place on her own knee, as the only method of securing it from his uneconomical depredations. His appearance mumping the eternal sugar was something indescribable.'
