the financial results of the French State telegraphs would not have been altered materially. The deficit, in 1866, on account of operating expenses, $255,173, was sufficient to permit of the sending of 457,300 messages "on public service," the equivalent of 16 per cent. of the messages sent by the public. It would be unreasonable to assume that the State could have need of such recourse to the telegraphs. [Sidenote: _Summary of Foreign Experience_] To sum up the evidence from Belgium, Switzerland, and France, submitted by Mr. Scudamore in 1866 to 1869: This evidence was that rates of 20 cents and 10 cents for 20 words, applied to inland messages, developed an enormous inland traffic, but that that traffic was unremunerative. So long as the rates on foreign messages and transit messages had remained very much higher than the rates on inland messages, the Belgian and Swiss State telegraphs had paid handsomely. But as soon as the latter rates had approached the level of the former rates, the net revenue had tumbled headlong; and there was, in 1868 and 1869, no certainty that it would not disappear entirely, or be reduced to such proportions as no longer to afford an adequate return upon the capital invested in the telegraphs. In the case of France, no evidence was presented that the State telegraphs ever had paid their way, though the prices obtained for the transmission of foreign messages and transit messages were between three and four times the returns obtained from the transmission of inland messages. [Sidenote: _English Companies' Experience_] While the evidence from Belgium, Switzerland and France, presented by Mr. Scudamore, did not support the proposition of a low uniform rate, irrespective of distance, the evidence furnished by the experience of the telegraph companies of the United Kingdom pointed strongly to the conclusion that a uniform rate, irrespective of distance, of 24 cents for 20 words, addresses not counted, was not remunerative in the then state of efficiency of the telegraph. In this connection it must be borne in mind that at this time messages had to be retransmitted at intervals of 200 or 300 miles; and that, while the maximum distance a message could travel was only 160 miles in Belgium, and 200 miles in Switzerland, it was 600 miles in the United Kingdom.