In compliance with this act, the sum of about $92,000,000 in gold was realized by the sale of bonds, and about $41,000,000, in addition, was obtained from surplus revenue; and thereupon the contemplated redemption was entered upon. But after the retirement and cancelation of only about $30,000,000 of these notes, and on the thirty-first day of May, 1878, this process was interrupted by the passage of an act forbidding their further retirement or cancelation, and providing that any such notes thereafter redeemed should not be canceled or destroyed, but should be “reissued and paid out again and kept in circulation.” At the time this act was passed the United States notes uncanceled and still outstanding amounted to $346,681,016. It will be observed that though the actual retirement of these notes was prohibited, their redemption in gold was still continued, coupled with the condition that, though thus redeemed, they should be still kept on foot and again put in circulation as a continuing and never-ending obligation of the Government, calling for payment in gold--not once alone, but as often as their reissue permitted, and without the least regard to prior so-called redemptions. It will be also observed that this prohibition of cancelation intervened seven months prior to January 1, 1879, the date when the general and unrestricted redemption and retirement of all these outstanding notes was, under the terms of the act of 1875, to commence. At the time when their further cancelation was thus terminated there remained of the gold which had been provided as a reserve for their redemption about $103,000,000. This is the fund which has since then been called the “gold reserve.” In point of fact, this reserve was thereafter made up of all the net gold held by the Government; and its amount at any particular date was ascertained by deducting from the entire stock of gold in the Treasury the amounts covered by outstanding gold certificates, which instruments resemble a bank’s certificate of deposit, and are issued by the Secretary of the Treasury to those making with the Government specific deposits of gold, to be returned to the holders of the certificates on demand. Of course the gold thus held for certificate-holders is not available for the redemption of United States notes.