in some parts of the country, and led, as
we shall hereafter observe, to actual insurrection in western
Pennsylvania.

The establishment of a national mint also occupied the attention of
Congress at this session. At the conclusion of the war for independence,
the continental Congress requested Robert Morris, the minister of
finance, to lay before them his views upon the subject of coins and
currency. The labor of preparing a report upon the subject was assigned
to the able assistant financier, Gouverneur Morris. It was prepared with
great care, and presented in 1782. Morris's first effort was to
harmonize the currency of all the states. He ascertained that the one
thousand, four hundred and fortieth part of a Spanish dollar was a
common divisor for the various currencies. Starting with that fraction
as a unit, he proposed the following table of moneys:--

Ten units to be equal to one penny.
Ten pence to one bill.
Ten bills, one dollar (about seventy-five cents of our present
currency).
Ten dollars one crown.

Congress debated the subject from time to time until 1784, when Mr.
Jefferson proposed a different scheme. He recommended four coins upon
the basis of the Spanish dollar, as follows:--

A golden piece of the value of ten dollars.
A dollar in silver.
A tenth of a dollar in silver.
A hundredth of a dollar in copper.

In 1785 Congress adopted Mr. Jefferson's scheme, and in 1786 made
provision for coinage upon that basis. This was the origin of our
decimal currency--the copper _cent_, the silver _dime_ and _dollar_, and
the golden _eagle_. Since then, several other coins of different values,
having the decimal basis, have been made of gold and silver; and a
smaller cent, made of metallic composition, has been coined.

Mr. Jefferson, soon after he came into the cabinet, urged the necessity
of a uniform and national coinage, "to banish the discordant pounds,
shillings, pence, and farthings of the different states, and to
establish in their stead the new denominations." The subject received
some attention during that session, and was agitated in the next (the
one we are now considering); but it was not until the second of April,
1792, that laws were enacted for the establishment and regulation of a
mint. Thereafter there was much delay, and the mint was not in full
operation until January, 1795. During that interval its performances
were chiefly experimental, and the variety o