UNITED STATES: MORRIS'S SCHEME, 1782
In accordance with this system the earliest financial steps of the Continental Congress in 1775—its issues of bills of credit—were based upon, and the bills were declared payable in, the Spanish dollar or piece of eight, to which, on the report of a special commission, appointed on 19th April 1776, the various gold and silver coins circulating by different standards in different colonies were rated by a tariff. According to this tariff the guinea weighing 5 dwts. 8 grs. was to be equivalent to 4 2⁄3 dollars, and the English crown equal to 1 1⁄9 dollar.
Gold bullion was rated 17 dollars per oz. Troy weight; sterling silver at 1 1⁄9 dollar per oz.
Assuming the coins to be of full weight, the ratio here established is nearly the English ratio of 15.21. The ratio for bullion is slightly different, but hardly materially.
Six years later, at the request of a committee of Congress, the superintendent of finance, Robert Morris, submitted a scheme for a national coinage (15th January 1782). This scheme is remarkable for
its clear-sightedness and grasp, as well as the testimony it bore to the European monetary system of the time. After deciding on silver as a necessary unit, the report thus proceeds:—
"The various coins which have circulated in America have undergone different changes in their value, so that there is hardly any which can be considered as a general standard unless it be Spanish dollars. These pass in Georgia at 5s., in North Carolina and New York at 8s., in Virginia and the four Eastern States at 6s., in all the other States except South Carolina at 7s. 6d., and in South Carolina at 32s. 6d."
As a common denominator, calculated from part of these figures, Morris proposed a monetary unit of 1⁄4-grain in fine silver, the multiples to be by the decimal system, the dollar containing 1440 units, and the Mint price of fine silver being 22,237 units per pound.
On the following 21st February 1782 Congress approved of the establishment of a Mint, and directed Morris to prepare and report a plan for conducting it.
In a concurrent paper of notes on the establishment of a money unit, and of a coinage for the United States, Jefferson proposed, in opposition to Morris's scheme, a decimal system resting on the dollar, and with a ratio of 15:1.