At an early date the Belgium Government concluded that the first three of the four factors just enumerated were beyond the control of the State, and therefore permanent. It resolved, therefore, to attempt to neutralize them by developing the inland traffic to such proportions that it should become a source of profit, that traffic having been, up to that time, a source of loss. Accordingly, on January 1st, 1863, the Government lowered the charge on inland messages from 30 cents for 20 words, addresses included, to 20 cents. As that reduction did not prove sufficiently effective, the charge on inland messages was reduced, on December 1st, 1865, to 10 cents for 20 words. Under that reduction the loss incurred upon the inland messages rose from an annual average of $13,800 in 1863 to 1865, to an annual average of $59,500 in 1866 to 1869; and the average annual return upon the capital invested fell to 2.8 per cent. This evidence was before Mr. Scudamore when he argued from the experience of Belgium in favor of a uniform rate, irrespective of distance, of 24 cents for 20 words, not counting the addresses. Mr. Scudamore shared the opinion of the Belgium Government that the rate of 10 cents would so stimulate the traffic as to become very profitable. As a matter of fact, things went from bad to worse in Belgium, and for many years the Belgian State telegraphs failed to earn operating expenses.[9] By way of explanation it should be added that the so-called transit messages and foreign messages were profitable for two reasons. In the first place, the Belgian Government kept high the rates on those messages. In the second place, those messages are carried much more cheaply than inland messages. The transit messages, say from Germany to England, have only to be retransmitted; they are not received across the counter, nor are they delivered across the counter and by messenger. The foreign messages are burdened with only one of the two foregoing relatively costly operations. In 1866 the Belgian Government stated that, if the cost to the Telegraph Department of a given number of words transmitted as a message in transit be represented by two, the corresponding cost of the same number of words received and transmitted as a foreign message would be represented by three, while the cost of the same number of words received and transmitted as an inland message would be represented by five. [Sidenote: _Swiss Experience_]