novel principle the crudely extemporized rules of the miners were
to be recognized as law, and this system of instability and
uncertainty made the basis of title and the arbiter of all disputes,
instead of sweeping it away and ushering in a system of permanence
and peace through the well-appointed agency of the Land Department.
It was easy to see that this was an act to encourage litigation
and for the benefit of lawyers, and not to promote the real interest
of the miners or increase the product of the mines.

This was made perfectly clear at the time, by the report of a Senate
committee of the Legislature of Nevada. In speaking of the local
laws of the miners, it says, "There never was confusion worse
confounded. More than two hundred districts within the limit of
a single State, each with its self-approved code; these codes
differing not alone each from the other, but presenting numberless
instances of contradiction in themselves. The law of one point is
not the law of another five miles distant, and a little further on
will be a code which is the law of neither of the former, and so
on, _ad inifitum;_ with the further disturbing fact superadded,
that the written laws themselves may be overrun by some peculiar
custom which can be found nowhere recorded, and the proof of which
will vary with the volume of interested affidavits which may be
brought on either side to establish it. Again, in one district
the work to be done to hold a claim is nominal, in another exorbitant,
in another abolished, in another adjourned from year to year. A
stranger, seeking to ascertain the law, is surprised to learn that
there is no satisfactory public record to which he can refer; no
public officer to whom he may apply, who is under any bond or
obligation to furnish him information, or guarantee its authenticity.
Often, in the new districts, he finds there is not even the semblance
of a code, but a simple resolution adopting the code of some other
district, which may be a hundred miles distant. What guarantee
has he for the investment of either capital or labor under such a
system?" The report proceeds to show that these regulations can
have no permanency. "A miners' meeting," it declares, "adopts a
code; it stands apparently as the law. Some time after, on a few
days' notice, a corporal's guard assembles, and, on simple motion,
radically changes the whole system by which claims may be held in
a district. Before a man may trave