ution, by which
power had been given to Congress to dispose of and make all needful
rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property
belonging to the United States, with the power also to admit new states
into this Union, with only such limitations as are expressed in the
section in which this power is given. The government, of which Colonel
Mason was the executive, had its origin in the lawful exercise of a
belligerent right over a conquered territory. It had been instituted
during the war by the command of the President of the United States. It
was the government when the territory was ceded as a conquest, and it
did not cease, as a matter of course, or as a necessary consequence of
the restoration of peace. The President might have dissolved it by
withdrawing the army and navy officers who administered it, but he did
not do so. Congress could have put an end to it, but that was not done.
The right inference from the inaction of both is, that it was meant to
be continued until it had been legislatively changed. No presumption of
a contrary intention can be made. Whatever may have been the causes of
delay, it must be presumed that the delay was consistent with the true
policy of the Government[5]."

This guess, being the last guess, must now be taken as authoritative.

The prospectors and miners were, then, in the start, simply trespassers
upon the public lands as against the Government of the United States,
with no laws to guide, restrain or protect them, and with nothing to
fear from the military authorities. They were equal to the occasion. The
instinct of organization was a part of their heredity. Professor Macy,
in a treatise issued by Johns Hopkins University, once wrote: "It has
been said that if three Americans meet to talk over an item of business,
the first thing they do is to organize."

"Finding themselves far from the legal traditions and restraints of the
settled East," said the report of the Public Land Commission of 1880,
"in a pathless wilderness, under the feverish excitement of an industry
as swift and full of chance as the throwing of dice, the adventurers of
1849 spontaneously instituted neighborhood or district codes of
regulation, which were simply meant to define and protect a brief
possessory ownership. The ravines and river bars which held the placer
gold were valueless for settlement or home-making, but were splendid
stakes to hold for a few short seasons and gamble with nat