FROM OUR PITTSBURGH CORRESPONDENT.

F. DOUGLASS, ESQ.: SIR:—For some time
back, rain, clouds, fogs, mixed in large quan
tities with fitful gusts of Bryant's "south
east wind," have combined to obscure the beau
ties of our autumnal season. Autumn stayed
but a short while with us—coming late—bring
ing, as usual, rosy morns, gold and purple sun
sets, heavy pearl frosts, bracing and breathable
air, earlier twilights, and clear moonlight nights;
but now the rude Northwester howls in the
trees, rushed through the streets, and tears over
the house-tops, and whistles down "the old
chimney;" and now that politics has released
its vice-like grasp upon public energies, pub
lic thoughts admonish us of the coming com
forts of the fireside. Yes, the field of Ameri
can politics is about being cleared. I say about
being cleared, for you cannot expect all the
would-be heroes, the Union-savers, the co-operative disunionists of the Bully Brooks school,
and the Ostend manifesto sympathizers, to sink
into their entities and obscurities all of a sud
den, like meteors. No, Sir, Mr. Cincinnati
Platform is yet to be informed of immense services, and great expense of efforts rendered to
support the plank staging upon which he stood;
and this patriotic labor will have to be whispered from disinterested motives in his own ears.
Poor old bachelor of by-gone days! whose
party made a very shrewd move, followed by a
much shrewder one in the denial of his own
identity, which leaves him the liberty to choose
a "bosom companion" from the beauties of
Brigham Young's harem; and this is the more
probable, since the Mormon High Priest has
declared his adhesion to the party, admired its
policy, and swelled swimmingly in its great fu
ture. More money has been expended in this
State during the last campaign, to elect this
antiquated friend of Gov. Wise, than would
have supported our public school system for
one year, and given a decent school to the col
ored people in every district besides, what they
have not got now. A stranger who would cast
a cursory glance at the armorial escutcheon of
the State, would see flaunting Virtue, Liberty
and Independence, and being in an inductive
mood, might infer that these attributes of our
State power existed in an eminent degree
of development and appreciation among its
citizens. But, not so. Pennsylvania seems
to court the same notoriety and share in the
meanness of her policy and contemptible con
duct, as the chivalry of the Old Dominion, who

robbed her colored citizens of over fifty thous
and dollars to pay current expenses that could
not be met by her defunct treasury. If to appropriate the property of others to one's own
use, without rendering an equivalent is stealing,
then are the colored people in this section of
the State, to all intents and purposes, robbed
of thousands, and the State the robber.

It is but a few years since the concentrated
essence of State wisdom, at Harrisburgh, recon
structed our free school system, dividing the
State into a certain number of school districts,
without making any provision for a school for
the colored citizens of this city, who were de
prived nearly twelve months of the benefits
(such as they are) of the system. In the mean
time, the youth were sent to pay schools, which
had sprung up to supply the want. Of course,
the tax was extracted from our purses, with
much the same complacent countenance as a
fox would present to a chicken—reasoning he
could afford to use mild means because he possessed the power to enforce obedience to any desire he wished.

About two years ago, the Legislature chartered a Central High School, and took the opportunity to recover their wits by engrafting a section upon it, providing for the opening of a school for colored youth. Very well—this went to show it was more through ignorance, (if we can think a Pennsylvania Legislator ignorant,) than design, that we were deprived of our school. But to our surprise, we were called upon to give support to another institution from which we did not receive the remotest interest or benefit whatever. Why were our children denied the privilege of attending the High School? Solely because it would shatter to fragments the "centre of circulation," in the bodies of our virtue, liberty, independence white people, to have the monotonous complexion of their schools diversified by the soot and copper colored plebeian juvenlies. Yet I can name twenty-five of our people who pay the mean tax of eight dollars and twenty-five cents each, and fifty from one to two dollars each, toward sustaining this school under the head of special school tax, and this aside from and independent of the common school tax; besides, the majority of these tax payers have sent, and are now sending their children to the Alleghany Institute at another and their own expense.

Yours, truly,

DUQUESNE.

PITTSBURGH, Dec. 5th, 1856.