Barbauld's use of personification

Anna Barbauld's "Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq., on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade" begins with a lamentation of the sinful practice of the slave trade and the affect upon the morality of a country who continues its injustices. Barbauld expresses this immediately in line 2 when she states "Thy country knows the sin, and stands the shame!" She calls into question the convictions of the entire nation who claim to be furthering justice and equality, while in practice, they were furthering the very despotism they condemned in the political environment of the "civilized world." Barbauld uses the personification of pity, conscience, Mercy, and Freedom in the first half of her critique to illuminate the ignorance of a continued practice of slavery. By doing so, she questions the intelligence of any person who condones slavery and tactfully undermines the validity of its economic prominence. She continues to question the intellect of the pro-slavery movement in line 20 with more personification, "In vain, to thy white standard gathering round, Wit Worth and Parts and Eloquence are found:" She then shifts her argument from slavery as a mindless practice furthered only by greed, to a question of the morality of such a practice. "The artful gloss, that moral sense confounds" is another clever method with which Barbauld critiques the defenders of the slave trade. She is arguing that ignoring the immorality of such a barbaric enterprise does not wash clean the hands that further it's injustices. In conclusion, Barbauld's rhetoric is a masterful use of the personification of moral and intellectual properties to reveal the ignorance wielded by the pro-slavery defenders.