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At the former date the population was under
seventy thousand; at the latter, it was upward of three hundred
thousand. But no other colony increased to anything like this extent
during the gold rush.
The first care of the Government at Sydney, on receiving the official
report of the existence of gold, was to decide upon the attitude to be
assumed toward the diggers. It was abundantly clear that the
establishment of mining industries would mean a great increase of
expense to the Government. It was equally clear that, as the law had
been declared over and over again in the colony, unauthorized digging on
Crown land constituted a trespass, for which the digger was legally
responsible. But the Governor was wise enough to see that no threats of
prosecution would deter men bent on digging in unoccupied lands, even if
it were possible to preserve the lands of private owners from forcible
intrusion. The "squatting" question had demonstrated that, beyond a
certain point, the theory of Crown occupation of waste lands was liable
to break down.


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