Pittsburgh, February 6, 1848.

Dear Douglass:—I am now a constant recipient of our luminary, the North Star, and find it all that I could desire—a paper of vast interest and usefulness—and I pray you, as I know you will do, keep it so; with its present character as a liberal, high moral, anti-sectarian, independent, unyielding and uncompromising enemy to that most blighting of all curses, and "abomination of abominations"—Slavery. Whether shielded by the statutes of despotism and tyranny, covered by the sacerdotal garbs of a miserable and false religion, or guarded by the point of the bayonet, it must be a terror to the evil doers of our land, and the beacon-hope of the bondman.

The good people of this gloomy city, have for the past two weeks, had the cloud and darkness dispelled from their moral vision, by the highly entertaining and edifying Reform Lectures and Sermons of Mr. John Allen, a friend and brother from the "Old Bay State," assisted several times by the heavenly and divinely chaunting tones of the Eddy Family, from the same State, who also have been entertaining the citizens with their almost inimitable music. They are said to be not inferior to the Hutchinson Family. Mr. Allen, though a high-toned, "land reformer," takes the highest Anti-Slavery ground, viewing the one as co-essential with, and inseparable from the other.

Church robberies are of frequent occurrence in this place. Of the ninety-six churches in the two cities and suburbs, nearly the whole have been entered at different times, and their collection, Sabbath school, and missionary boxes, emptied of their contents.—In one instance, but five cents were found, and even that did not escape the sacrilegious wretches! This will give you an idea of the kind of material with which this community is infested. Would it not be well if the Colonizationists would find a Liberia for them?

There is a great religious revival at present going on among the colored people, under Rev. Thomas Lawrence. This is right and good, taking the orthodox religious view of the subject; but I could wish, as I know you also do, that the temporal welfare of our people was as much cared for as the spiritual; or, in other words, we could wish that they possessed as much of the earthly as they do of the heavenly inheritance. In view of the latter, they relinquish or neglect entirely their right to the former. This is one among the greatest errors with which reformers have to contend. Our brethren seem to be insensible to the fact, that the well-being of man, while upon earth, is to God of as much importance as his welfare in heaven. Man is superior to all earthly beings or things; he having here but a temporal existence, therefore his temporal welfare should first be cared for.

There was held in this city, in the Lafayette Assembly Rooms, on Tuesday last, a mass Clay Meeting, of course to enter into measures preparatory to the nomination of the "Sage of Ashland." It was a full meeting, and you must not think strange to hear me so express myself about Whiggery, when I assure you that I never attended a meeting, not even Anti-slavery, in which more consistent and greater truths were uttered, by all speakers, concerning the character of their favorite, than did the speakers at this meeting express concerning Mr. Clay. Every orator who mounted the rostrum, declared that he is the embodiment of Whig principles. Is this not true to the letter? Who dare dispute it?

The Daily Post of this city, the sub-Government organ, has become the "Deputy bloodhound," and whining spaniel for its Southern masters. The editor has recently been to Washington City, crouching at the feet of his Southern superiors, and has probably received from them, or the hands of that miserable old man, Ritchie, of the Union, the Privy Counsellor of James K. Polk, a right to be the watch-dog and principal hound in this region, on the running trail after fugitive men and women, fleeing from the cruelties of American slavery. This same Daily Post, in the face of a church-going and professedly religious community, in open daylight, under a glaring noon-day sun, and the disapprobation of high Heaven, dares to advertise in the columns of his paper, a Reward for Runaway Slaves! and these persons, too, having been brought into the State by the steamer Grey Eagle, from which they escaped. There were three of them, two of whom escaped; who, by a late act of Assembly, were free the moment their foot touched Pennsylvanian soil. But were they taken, justice to them could not be expected, since it appears that the Judges of the Pennsylvanian Courts, with a few honorable exceptions, are but the pledged minions of the slave power in this country. How contemptibly servile—how disgustingly crouching, is the conduct of these men of the Post, who have fully proved themselves capable of the meanest and lowest act of pimping! They have consigned themselves to that infamy which all such creatures merit, as nobly and fearlessly shown by the respective notices of the daily papers, especially the Dispatch, and Telegraph, of this city.

In this animadversion, you may account me severe; but while the fact exists that the infernal monster, Slavery, has its ponderous grasp upon the throats of mothers, sisters and wives; that ourselves, old men and children, are but stall-fed cattle for the market; that the denuded persons of the female are daily exhibited in the Southern markets and public places; that the groans and cries of the degraded millions are hourly sent up to Heaven for deliverance; that one-sixth of the whole American women are subject to the brutal will and lust of five-sixths of American men; and that the object of these worse than land-pirates was to bring back those flying, panting victims to this wretched condition; can I—dare I—speak in any other than thunder tones upon this subject? No, no!—not I. You being my helper, and God the mainstay of us both, I will never cease to cry aloud, and spare not, until you, and I, and every wronged and oppressed son and daughter of America and the world, stand up in the living image and dignity of manhood, in the full possession of all those rights and privileges common to our nature, made sacred by the God of Love! Tell me, when the ruthless slaveholder has fully prostrated before him his struggling victim in the person of my wife, mother, or sister, piteously crying, "Help! help!" that I should stop to address him with a kind of formal politeness or placid arguments, lest I only aggravate him and fail in my effort! Do you subscribe to doctrine such as this? Tell this to others, but tell it not to me. Should I not arrest his outrageous grasp, by any effective means within my power, in which the laws of Nature's God would justify me?

I regret to see that rather wrong-spirited allusion, concerning the North Star, which appeared in the last number of the "Mystery;" there being no just cause for such a thing. I simply notice this matter, that it may correct a wrong impression, which might arise from it. One thing is, however, certain. All who are acquainted with you and me, certainly, if they know anything of us at all, know us to be incapable of meriting that reflection.

Your "charge" upon the Mexican War, and comments upon the Colonization speech of Henry Clay, are a triumphant vindication of right against wrong; truth against falsehood; and of the undefended against the vilest malignity. To use a homely figure, you completely "floored your man." Do you know, Douglass, that you have been grappling with one who possesses attributes known to no other human being—attributes which render him truly "God-like," as his admirers declare him to be? This can be illustrated to a demonstration, and the great embodiment proved to be a Trinity. He is the embodiment of Colonization, the embodiment of Whiggery, and the embodiment of Slavery. Is he not a very Deity?—and how little were you aware with whom you struggled!

I see that our good friend Joseph Cassey, of Philadelphia, has gone the way of all flesh. I concur with you I sympathy with his amiable widow and interesting family for the loss of so good a friend as he; but his relict and children have been left well provided with the good things of this life. This, Mrs. Cassey merited, as her name was always among the first of those untiring friends of the slave, who so assiduously labored for the Anti-Slavery cause.

I prefer thus to give you a summary of passing events, than one long article on the subject of Slavery; as I know full well that you will attend to that particular department, and that, too, with the pen of a ready writer.

Yours, in behalf of our oppressed and down-trodden countrymen,

M. R. D.