With ample space and food multiplication works automatically, being kept up to the limit of space and food by the procreative instinct.
If it can be shown that multiplication is not sufficiently stimulated by this instinct, then it must be concluded that, _in the minds of the citizens_ the space and food are not ample.
In New Zealand the procreative impulse does not keep multiplication at an equal pace with the apparent supply of food and space, and this is due, as has been shown, to the fact that our citizens are not satisfied that the supply _is_ ample.
They have come to enlarge the definition of "food," and this term now includes luxuries easily obtainable for themselves and their families.
But the luxuries of life and living can only be easily obtained when individual effort to obtain them is unhampered.

Every burden which a man has to bear (only the best are here referred to,--the fit members of the State) limits his power to provide for himself, and any he may bring into the world.
If the State decrees that a citizen shall support himself, his mate, and his progeny, well and good,--if he has no other burden to bear, no other responsibility, he knows exactly where he is and what he has to do, and directs his energies and controls his impulses, and enlarges his desires to suit his tastes and purposes.
But if the State decrees that a citizen shall not only support all for whose existence he is responsible, but also all those unable to support themselves, born into the world in increasing numbers as congenital defectives, and manufactured in the world by legalised drinking saloons, and by pauperising charitable aid and benevolent institutions, then our self-respecting right-respecting citizen must decide whether he will forego the luxury and ease that he may enjoy, and rear the normal family, or curtail his own progeny, and support the army of defectives thrown upon society by the State-encouraged fertility of the unfit.
It has already been shown, that in this colony the best fit to multiply are ceasing to do so, because of a desire to attain a social and financial stability that will protect them and their dependents from want or the prospect of want.

There is every reason to believe, that when this stability is assured the normal family soon follows.
The love of luxurious idleness and a passion for excitement, which were typical of the voluntarily barren women of ancient Rome, have little place with us, as a cause of limited nativity.
Men and women reason out, that they cannot bear all the burdens that the State imposes upon them, support an increasing army of paupers, and lunatics and defectives, and non-producers, and that luxuriously, and at the same time incur the additional burden of rearing a large family.
Let us examine these burdens, and see if the complaint of our best stock is justified.
The amount raised by taxation in New Zealand (including local rates) during the year 1902-03, amounted per head of population (excluding Maories) to L5 4s.7d.The bread-winners in New Zealand number according to official returns, 340,230, and the total rates and taxes collected for the year 1902-03 amounted to L4,174,787 or L12 5s.4d.for each bread-winner for the year.
On March 31st, 1901 (the last census date) there were 23.01 persons per thousand of population over 15 years of age, unable to work from sickness, accident and infirmity.

Of these 12.72 were due to sickness and accident, and 10.29 to "specified infirmities." The proportion of those suffering from sickness and accident in 1874 was 12.64 per 1000 over 15 years, practically the same as for 1901, while disability from "specified infirmities" (lunacy, idiocy, epilepsy, deformity, etc.)--degeneracies strongly hereditary--rose rapidly from 5.32 in 1874 to 10.29 in 1901, or taking the total sickness and infirmity, from 17.96 in 1874 to 23.01 in 1901.
On the last census date there were 340,230 bread-winners, and 12,747 persons suffering from sickness, accident, and infirmity, or 26 fit to work and earn for every one unfit.
The cost to the Colony per year of-- L 1.

Hospitals, year ended 31st March, 1903 138,027 2.