Violent speeches were made on these proposals at the very time when the House was refusing to support either an army or a navy.  Sedgwick introduced some good sense into a debate that was alternating between blatant vaporing and legal pedantry, by pointing out that, under the Constitution, the President of the United States ought to be allowed to have some say about the matter.  It was the function of the President to treat with foreign powers, and yet the House was now considering action which was in effect “prescribing the terms of treaty, and restraining the constitutional power from treating on any other terms.”  This argument was used effectively by a number of speakers.  It turned the main position taken by the advocates of non-intercourse, which was that the real objection came from the bondholders who feared that the ensuing loss of revenue might prevent them from getting their interest.  Such imputations of sordid motive became fruitless when the issue was raised of the constitutional authority of the President, but the advocates of non-intercourse met this new point of view by pointing out that the Constitution gave Congress the right to regulate commerce.  The feeling against Great Britain was so great that the House was bent on indulging it, and on April 25, 1794, the non-intercourse bill was passed by a vote of 58 to 34.  The Senate was so evenly divided that, on the motion to pass the bill to its third reading, there was a tie vote, and Vice-President Adams, who was called upon for a casting vote, gave it against the bill.  About a month later in the House another attempt was made to carry the policy of non-intercourse by a joint resolution, but by this time a reaction in favor of the Administration had set in and the resolution received only 24 yeas to 46 nays, James Madison being among those who stuck to the proposal to the last.

While the House was abandoning itself to reckless mischief-making, Washington was striving to arrange matters by negotiation.  The perplexities of his situation were great and varied.  As a military man he knew that American jurisdiction was precarious so long as Great Britain held the interior.  The matter had been the subject of prolix correspondence between Jefferson and Hammond, but the American demands that Great Britain should surrender the frontier posts in accordance with the treaty of peace had been met by demands that America, in accordance with that same treaty, should first satisfy various claims of British subjects for restitution, indemnity, and relief.  The regular diplomatic machinery stuck fast at this point, both at home and abroad.  In one of his gossipy, confidential letters Fisher Ames remarked that Hammond was a most “petulant, impudent” man, habitually railing against the conduct of our government “with a gabble that his feelings render doubly unintelligible.”  But Pinckney, our representative in England, was equally undiplomatic.  He was “sour and also Gallican”; although calm in manner, “he had prejudices, and unless a man has a mind above them, he can do little service there.”