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. [Sidenote: UNITED STATES: REPORT OF 1785] "Just principles," he says, after stating the legal ratio in the chief European countries, "will lead us to disregard legal proportions altogether, to inquire into the market price of gold in the several countries with which we shall be principally connected in commerce, and to take an average from them. Perhaps we might well safely lean to a proportion somewhat above par for gold, considering our neighbourhood and commerce with the sources of the coins, and the tendency which the high price of gold in Spain has to draw thither all that of their mines, leaving silver principally for our and other markets." The settlement of the matter was, however, delayed, although in the course of the year Morris declared that "all our dollars are rapidly going to the enemy in exchange for light gold, which must eventually cause a considerable loss and a scarcity of silver which will be seriously felt." In this undetermined state the matter rested till 13th May 1785, when the grand committee on the money unit made its report.