The mates and captains of the brigs and snows in the Delaware River met and resolved not to go to sea for another ten days, swearing to lie idle sooner than feed the British robbers in the West Indies.

It was in the midst of these demonstrations that Washington seized the one hope of peace and recommended a special mission to England.
The treaty negotiated by John Jay in 1794 was received with an outburst of popular indignation.

Jay was damned as a traitor, while the sailors of Portsmouth burned him in effigy.

By way of an answer to the terms of the obnoxious treaty, a seafaring mob in Boston raided and burned the British privateer Speedwell, which had put into that port as a merchantman with her guns and munitions hidden beneath a cargo of West India produce.
The most that can be said of the commercial provisions of the treaty is that they opened direct trade with the East Indies but at the price of complete freedom of trade for British shipping in American ports.

It must be said, too, that although the treaty failed to clear away the gravest cause of hostility--the right of search and impressment--yet it served to postpone the actual dash, and during the years in which it was in force American shipping splendidly prospered, freed of most irksome handicaps.
The quarrel with France had been brewing at the same time and for similar reasons.