Great practical advantage was experienced from it in the War of 1812, when the United States was a creditor nation.
On the whole, Jay's diplomacy was as enlightened as it was shrewd, but at the time it exposed him to furious denunciation which he disdained to notice.

"I had read the history of Greece," he wrote to a friend, "and was apprised of the politics and proceedings of more recent date." The philosophic composure which he drew from his knowledge of history enabled him to behave with calm dignity while he was being burned in effigy, and while mob orators were heaping insult and calumny on his name.

After a struggle that shook the Government, the treaty was ratified by the Senate on June 24, 1795, with the exception of the article about the West Indian trade, an omission to which Great Britain made no objection.

The treaty was extremely unpopular, chiefly because unreasonable expectations of its provisions had been entertained.

People had yet to learn that national independence has its defects as well as its advantages, and that the traditional intimacy between the West Indies and America was now on a footing of privilege and not of right.