But besides its annual losses to government, there exists a serious drawback in the value to the people of the reduced tariff. The diminished rate in Belgium is accompanied by no promise of prompt delivery. Despatches at a half-franc each must take their chance of transmission, and submit to the delay caused by other service. Speed rates are established to compensate for loss by the reduced tariff. Thus, a message requiring immediate transit is charged three times an ordinary message, reversing the plan of the Western Union Company, which transmits promptly and indiscriminately at ordinary rates, but makes an immense reduction when the night hours can be used. Of course business men, to whom time is money, are obliged to pay an extra franc to secure that promptness and certainty of transmission without which the telegraph is of little value for all important transactions. The tariff has been, therefore, practically increased to one and a half francs, or forty-two cents for distances which cannot average more than seventy-five miles, and probably do not exceed fifty. The cheap messages take their chance. In America, a repeated message is charged half a rate more than the ordinary tariff. In Belgium it pays four single rates. Cipher messages are also charged four times the price of ordinary messages, while here they are received at ordinary rates. Were the United States government to construct lines under the Washburne bill, and adopt this Belgian system, its tariffs between Washington and Baltimore—about the average distance of the Belgian service—would be, for prompt delivery such as our telegraph companies perform, _forty-five cents_, instead of the existing charge of ten cents; for messages to which no assurance of promptitude is given, fifteen cents; and for repeated messages, _sixty cents_, instead of our present rate of fifteen cents. If, now, with all its advantages of cheap labor and the profits arising from international and transit messages, the Belgian government, on these bases of charge, admits a clear loss in 1866 of 255,282 francs, how will it be possible for Mr. Washburne to secure a profit to government large enough in a few years to pay the cost of the line, on a common tariff of fifteen cents for all classes of messages? BELGIAN OFFICIALS ACKNOWLEDGE THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THEIR SYSTEM. As Mr. Washburne claims for European telegraphs speed, certainty, and economy, it is well to be able to read Belgian official testimony on the same subject. The last report of the Belgian department of public works has the following paragraph:—