California Romantic and Resourceful | Page 5

the act was unnecessary as a
precautionary measure[3] still the practical result of the timeliness of
the proclamation was to prevent attempts to found private titles to the
new discovery of gold on any customs or laws of Mexico.
Meantime, California was governed by military authority, - was treated
as if it were merely a military outpost, away out somewhere west of the
"Great American Desert." Except an act to provide for the deliveries
and taking of mails at certain points on the coast, and a resolution
authorizing the furnishing of arms and ammunition to certain
immigrants, no Federal act was passed with reference to California in
any relation; in no act of Congress was California even mentioned after
its annexation, until the act of March 3, 1849, extending the revenue
laws of the United States "over the territory and waters of Upper
California, and to create certain collection districts therein." This act of
March 3, 1849, not only did not extend the general laws of the United
States over California, but did not even create a local tribunal for its
enforcement, providing that the District Court of Louisiana and the
Supreme Court of Oregon should be courts of original jurisdiction to
take cognizance of all violations of its provisions. Not even the act of
September 9, 1850, admitting California into the Union, extended the
general laws of the United States over the State by express provision.
Not until the act of September 26, 1850, establishing a District Court in
the State, was it enacted by Congress "that all the laws of the United
States which are not locally inapplicable shall have the same force and
effect within the said State of California as elsewhere in the United
States[4]."

Though no general Federal laws were extended by Congress over the
later acquisitions from Mexico for more than two years after the end of
the war, the paramount title to the public lands had vested in the
Federal Government by virtue of the provisions of the treaty of peace;
the public land itself had become part of the public domain of the
United States. The army of occupation, however, offered no opposition
to the invading army of prospectors. The miners were, in 1849, twenty
years ahead of the railroad and the electric telegraph. The telephone
had not yet been invented. In the parlance of the times, the prospectors
"had the drop" on the army. In Colonel Mason's unique report of the
situation that confronted him, discretion waited upon valor. "The entire
gold district," he wrote to the Government at Washington, "with few
exceptions of grants made some years ago by the Mexican authorities,
is on land belonging to the United States. It was a matter of serious
reflection with me how I could secure to the Government certain rents
or fees for the privilege of procuring this gold; but upon considering the
large extent of the country, the character of the people engaged, and the
small scattered force at my command, I am resolved not to interfere,
but permit all to work freely." It is not recorded whether the resolute
colonel was conscious of the humor of his resolution. This early
suggestion of conservation was, under the circumstances, manifestly
academic.
The Supreme Court of the United States, in commenting on the singular
situation in which Colonel Mason found himself, clearly and forcefully
states his predicament. "His position," says that Court, "was unlike
anything that had preceded it in the history of our country . . . . It was
not without its difficulties, both as regards the principle upon which he
should act, and the actual state of affairs in California. He knew that the
Mexican inhabitants of it had been remitted by the treaty of peace to
those municipal laws and usages which prevailed among them before
the territory had been ceded to the United States, but that a state of
things and population had grown up during the war, and after the treaty
of peace, which made some other authority necessary to maintain the
rights of the ceded inhabitants and of immigrants, from misrule and
violence. He may not have comprehended fully the principle applicable
to what he might rightly do in such a case, but he felt rightly and acted
accordingly. He determined, in the absence of all instruction, to

maintain the existing government. The territory had been 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