ceded as a conquest, and was to be preserved and governed as such until
the sovereignty to which it had passed had legislated for it. That
sovereignty was the United States, under the Constitution, 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