Definition
In French law, a document certifying that a shipper has provided security to customs authorities guaranteeing that exported goods will be delivered to another French port rather than to a foreign country. The acquit à caution functioned as a bond receipt or security certificate: because certain goods attracted higher export duties when destined for foreign ports, French customs required shippers to post a caution (a form of surety or bond) before goods could depart. The acquit à caution was the official certificate proving that the caution had been received and the obligation undertaken. If the goods ultimately arrived at the declared French port, the obligation was discharged; if diverted to a foreign destination, the bond was forfeited and the higher duties, along with potential penalties, became due.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Acquit" in common English means to formally declare someone not guilty of a criminal charge, or more loosely to discharge or free oneself from an obligation. "Caution" in common English means care or warning.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Acquit" carried the sense of releasing or discharging from an obligation or debt. "Caution" in legal and French-influenced usage could denote a surety or pledge, a meaning now largely archaic in English.
The compound term acquit à caution does not mean an acquittal in the criminal sense, nor is it a warning. The phrase is closer to its older English senses: a release or discharge evidenced by a certificate, contingent on the fulfillment of a bonded obligation. Researchers encountering this term in English-language legal dictionaries should not import modern criminal-law associations of "acquit."
Common Confusion
Acquit à caution is sometimes loosely grouped with transit or drawback certificates in historical customs literature, but the mechanism is distinct. A drawback document certifies the return of duties already paid; an acquit à caution certifies a security posted against duties not yet incurred, contingent on destination. Researchers should also avoid conflating the caution here — a pledge or surety — with the caution used in Scottish law (a form of bail or security in judicial proceedings), which operates in a different procedural context.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow French customs-law term that appears in English-language legal dictionaries primarily as a point of comparative and historical reference. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in:
— 18th and 19th century treatises on French commercial or maritime law translated or summarized in English;
— historical scholarship on French port regulation, revenue law, or smuggling enforcement;
— comparative law discussions of customs bond mechanisms.
The Black's 2nd edition entry is truncated, which is a material research hazard: the definition as preserved cuts off mid-sentence. Researchers relying solely on that source will have an incomplete account of the document's legal effect and should consult primary French customs codes or contemporaneous French legal dictionaries (such as Merlin's Répertoire universel et raisonné de jurisprudence) to reconstruct the full operation of the instrument.
The term is of negligible significance in modern American or English practice. Its research value lies almost entirely in the historical French commercial law context. Law Mind corpus researchers working on 19th-century maritime commerce, Franco-American trade disputes, or comparative customs law should treat this term as a gateway to French-language sources rather than a self-contained English-law concept.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) is the sole source in the current corpus for this term, and its entry is fragmentary — the definition ends abruptly at "acqu," indicating a reproduction or transcription error in the source text. The preserved portion establishes the core mechanism accurately: differential export duty rates between foreign and domestic French destinations, the customs requirement of security from shippers, and the acquit à caution as the certificate of that security. No divergence between sources can be assessed given the single-source limitation. What the historical dictionary record misses is the procedural consequence — what happened upon completion of the voyage, how the caution was formally discharged, and what penalties attached to diversion — all of which would require supplementary French sources.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to historical French customs and revenue law. It has no direct counterpart in English common law or American federal customs law, though analogous bonding mechanisms for in-transit goods exist in modern customs regimes worldwide under different names.