The conscience is very liable to become sore with friction. One entire section of the American nation became sore, even to madness, with working in the collar of the world's condemnation. The slave States of America were very comfortable with slavery so long as they could hold it with self-respect, and so long as the world regarded them rather with sympathy and pity than with condemnation. As the popular opinion against slavery strengthened and became intensified, both in this and other countries, they became sore and sensitive. First, they tucked a constitutional rag between the collar and the skin; and as that did not seem to relieve them, they lined it with leaves from human philosophy; and philosophy soon wearing out, they tore their Bibles into pieces for materials with which to soften the cushion, and set the Christian church to making padding. Every thing failing to produce the desired result, and relieve them of their pain, they refused to draw their portion of the national load, kicked the Union in pieces, and ran away. They will never be happy again until slavery is abolished, or the attitude of the nation and of the world towards slavery is changed. This sore under the collar will never heal, either in or out of the Union, until the cause shall in some way be removed. It is the same with individuals as with peoples. A man cannot long wear a collar that presses upon his conscience, without getting through the skin--down upon the raw. When a man who sells liquor to his neighbors for drink, voluntarily apologizes to me for it, or justifies himself in it, I know very well that his conscience has a raw place upon it, and that it gives him trouble. When a woman takes particular pains to tell me that she is exceedingly economical, and that she really has had nothing for a year, I cannot but conclude that she has been making some expenditure, or some series of expenditures, that she knows she cannot afford, and that there is a raw place upon her conscience in consequence. In truth, I have never known a woman who wished to impress me with a sense of her rigid economy, who was not more anxious to convince herself of it than me. When a man undertakes to soften the character of any crime by apologies, and by arguments, it is invariably for the purpose of relieving its pressure upon a galled conscience, or shaping it to a different place. I am afraid the men are few who have escaped a galled spot upon their consciences.