Now the prejudice is actually setting the other way and great pains seems to be taken by the friends of ministers to prepare the public for the surrender of a British seventy-four to an opponent lately so much contemned.
It was when the news reached England that the _Java_ had been destroyed by the _Constitution_ that indignation found a climax in the outcry of the _Pilot_, a foremost naval authority: The public will learn, with sentiments which we shall not presume to anticipate, that a third British frigate has struck to an American.

This is an occurrence that calls for serious reflection,--this, and the fact stated in our paper of yesterday, that Lloyd's list contains notices of upwards of five hundred British vessels captured in seven months by the Americans.

Five hundred merchantmen and three frigates! Can these statements be true; and can the English people hear them unmoved?
Any one who would have predicted such a result of an American war this time last year would have been treated as a madman or a traitor.

He would have been told, if his opponents had condescended to argue with him, that long ere seven months had elapsed the American flag would have been swept from the seas, the contemptible navy of the United States annihilated, and their maritime arsenals rendered a heap of ruins.

Yet down to this moment not a single American frigate has struck her flag.