About this period the new Registry Act came into operation, requiring the owner of every decked vessel of fifteen tons and upwards to have her measurement accurately ascertained according to a prescribed scale, and providing that every vessel registered in the customs, and thus securing the advantages of a British ship, must have been built in the British dominions, or captured as a prize and, subsequently, owned by British subjects. The Act also ordered that her name and the port to which she belonged should be painted conspicuously on her stern, and that her certificate of registration should contain full particulars of her dimensions, age, and owners, together with the name of her commander and other details.[227] Some eminent writers on commerce, among whom the late J. R. McCulloch[228] stands conspicuous, have doubted the utility of compulsory registration; but this system, in after years materially improved, has been of great service to the State, as well as to individual shipowners. Indeed the exigencies of trade alone required that English merchant vessels should be provided in time of war with legally authorised certificates, so that they might be at once distinguished from those of other nations. Besides, the incalculable amount of property entrusted to owners of vessels obviously requires that their ships should be identifiable by a proper system of registration; for there would be little or no security for the safe transport of merchandise unless the title to the ship as well as to the cargo were indisputably established by the certificates of register, and by the customs’ and clearance papers, which the ship was then by law required to carry. [Sidenote: American Registry Act.] From the earliest period of American independence, Congress[229] passed a registration measure corresponding almost exactly with that of Great Britain. The national privileges of trade were by it confined to ships built in America and belonging to and commanded by citizens of that country on the 16th of May, 1789, and continually thereafter, or which had been taken and condemned as prizes in war, or forfeited for a breach of the United States laws. Few nations have asserted the rights of neutral ships[230] with greater energy than the people of the United States; and these rights could not have been enforced except by a system of registration. But it is superfluous to waste time in asserting the advantages of registration, which, in all cases where it is honestly performed, may be deemed one of the most salutary regulations introduced by civilisation and law, and one, too, of material value for the repression of crime and piracy. [Sidenote: Treaty between France and England, 1786.]