Morris accepted this appointment, and remained in office for three years and a half, until the beginning of 1785. He threw himself heart and soul into the work, helping his chief in every way; and in particular giving him invaluable assistance in the establishment of the "Bank of North America," which Congress was persuaded to incorporate,—an institution which was the first of its kind in the country. It was of wonderful effect in restoring the public credit, and was absolutely invaluable in the financial operations undertaken by the secretary.

When, early in 1782, the secretary was directed by Congress, to present to that body a report on the foreign coins circulating in the country, it was prepared and sent in by Gouverneur Morris, and he accompanied it with a plan for an American coinage. The postscript was the really important part of the document, and the plan therein set forth was made the basis of our present coinage system, although not until several years later, and then only with important modifications, suggested, for the most part, by Jefferson.

Although his plan was modified, it still remains true that Gouverneur Morris was the founder of our national coinage. He introduced the system of decimal notation, invented the word "cent" to express one of the smaller coins, and nationalized the already familiar word "dollar." His plan, however, was a little too abstruse for the common mind, the unit being made so small that a large sum would have had to be expressed in a very great number of figures, and there being five or six different kinds of new coins, some of them not simple multiples of each other. Afterwards he proposed as a modification a system of pounds, or dollars, and doits, the doit answering to our present mill, while providing also an ingenious arrangement by which the money of account was to differ from the money of coinage. Jefferson changed the system by grafting on it the dollar as a unit, and simplifying it; and Hamilton perfected it further.

To understand the advantage, as well as the boldness, of Morris's scheme, we must keep in mind the horrible condition of our currency at that time. We had no proper coins of our own; nothing but hopelessly depreciated paper bills, a mass of copper, and some clipped and counterfeited gold and silver coin from the mints of England, France, Spain, and even Germany. Dollars, pounds, shillings, doubloons, ducats, moidores, joes, crowns, pistareens, coppers, and sous, circulated indifferently, and with various values in each colony. A dollar was worth six shillings in Massachusetts, eight in New York, seven and sixpence in Pennsylvania, six again in Virginia, eight again in North Carolina, thirty-two and a half in South Carolina, and five in Georgia. The government itself had to resort to clipping in one of its most desperate straits; and at last people would only take payment by weight of gold or silver.

Morris, in his report, dwelt especially on three points: first, that the new money should be easily intelligible to the multitude, and should, therefore, bear a close relation to the coins already existing, as otherwise its sudden introduction would bring business to a stand-still; and would excite distrust and suspicion everywhere, particularly among the poorest and most ignorant, the day-laborers, the farm servants, and the hired help. Second, that its lowest divisible sum, or unit, should be very small, so that the price and the value of little things could be made proportionate; and third, that as far as possible the money should increase in decimal ratio. The Spanish dollar was the coin most widely circulated, while retaining everywhere about the same value. Accordingly he took this, and then sought for a unit that would go evenly into it, as well as into the various shillings, disregarding the hopelessly aberrant shilling of South Carolina. Such a unit was a quarter of a grain of pure silver, equal to the one fourteen hundred and fortieth part of a dollar; it was not, of course, necessary to have it exactly represented in coin. On the contrary, he proposed to strike two copper pieces, respectively of five and eight units, to be known as fives and eights. Two eights would then make a penny in Pennsylvania, and three eights one in Georgia, while three fives would make one in New York, and four would make one in Massachusetts. Morris's great aim was, while establishing uniform coins for the entire Union, to get rid of the fractional remainders in translating the old currencies into the new; and in addition his reckoning adapted itself to the different systems in the different states, as well as to the different coins in use. But he introduced an entirely new system of coinage, and moreover used therein the names of several old coins while giving them new values. His originally proposed table of currency was as follows:—

One crown = ten dollars, or10,000units.
One dollar = ten bills, or1,000"
One bill = ten pence, or100"
One penny = ten quarters, or10"
One quarter =1"

But he proposed that for convenience other coins should be struck, like the copper five and eight above spoken of, and he afterwards altered his names. He then called the bill of one hundred units a cent, making it consist of twenty-five grains of silver and two of copper, being thus the lowest silver coin. Five cents were to make a quint, and ten a mark.

Congress, according to its custom, received the report, applauded it, and did nothing in the matter. Shortly afterwards, however, Jefferson took it up, when the whole subject was referred to a committee of which he was a member. He highly approved of Morris's plan, and took from it the idea of a decimal system, and the use of the words "dollar" and "cent." But he considered Morris's unit too small, and preferred to take as his own the Spanish dollar, which was already known to all the people, its value being uniform and well understood. Then, by keeping strictly to the decimal system, and dividing the dollar into one hundred parts, he got cents for our fractional currency. He thus introduced a simpler system than that of Morris, with an existing and well-understood unit, instead of an imaginary one that would have to be, for the first time, brought to the knowledge of the people, and which might be adopted only with reluctance. On the other hand, Jefferson's system failed entirely to provide for the extension of the old currencies in the terms of the new without the use of fractions. On this account Morris vehemently opposed it, but it was nevertheless adopted. He foretold, what actually came to pass, that the people would be very reluctant to throw away their local moneys in order to take up a general money which bore no special relation to them. For half a century afterwards the people clung to their absurd shillings and sixpences, the government itself, in its post-office transactions, being obliged to recognize the obsolete terms in vogue in certain localities. Some curious pieces circulated freely up to the time of the Civil War. Still, Jefferson's plan worked admirably in the end.

All the time he was working so hard at the finances, Morris nevertheless continued to enjoy himself to the full in the society of Philadelphia. Imperious, light-hearted, good-looking, well-dressed, he ranked as a wit among men, as a beau among women. He was equally sought for dances and dinners. He was a fine scholar and a polished gentleman; a capital story-teller; and had just a touch of erratic levity that served to render him still more charming. Occasionally he showed whimsical peculiarities, usually about very small things, that brought him into trouble; and one such freak cost him a serious injury. In his capacity of young man of fashion, he used to drive about town in a phaeton with a pair of small, spirited horses; and because of some whim, he would not allow the groom to stand at their heads. So one day they took fright, ran, threw him out, and broke his leg. The leg had to be amputated, and he was ever afterwards forced to wear a wooden one. However, he took his loss with most philosophic cheerfulness, and even bore with equanimity the condolences of those exasperating individuals, of a species by no means peculiar to revolutionary times, who endeavored to prove to him the manifest falsehood that such an accident was "all for the best." To one of these dreary gentlemen he responded, with disconcerting vivacity, that his visitor had so handsomely argued the advantage of being entirely legless as to make him almost tempted to part with his remaining limb; and to another he announced that at least there was the compensation that he would be a steadier man with one leg than with two. Wild accounts of the accident got about, which rather irritated him, and in answer to a letter from Jay he wrote: "I suppose it was Deane who wrote to you from France about the loss of my leg. His account is facetious. Let it pass. The leg is gone, and there is an end of the matter." His being crippled did not prevent him from going about in society very nearly as much as ever; and society in Philadelphia was at the moment gayer than in any other American city. Indeed Jay, a man of Puritanic morality, wrote to Morris somewhat gloomily to inquire about "the rapid progress of luxury at Philadelphia;" to which his younger friend, who highly appreciated the good things of life, replied light-heartedly: "With respect to our taste for luxury, do not grieve about it. Luxury is not so bad a thing as it is often supposed to be; and if it were, still we must follow the course of things, and turn to advantage what exists, since we have not the power to annihilate or create. The very definition of 'luxury' is as difficult as the suppression of it." In another letter he remarked that he thought there were quite as many knaves among the men who went on foot as there were among those who drove in carriages.