Criminal Courts (Criminal Prosecutions), year ended 31st March, 1903 16,813 8.

Old Age Pensions (pensions only for persons over 65 years of age, who have been 25 years in the Colony, and who make a declaration of poverty, including departmental expenses) 212,962 A total of L705,756.

This constitutes the burden due to defectives and defects in others, a handful of workers have to bear in a sparse population of 800,000 souls in one of the finest countries on which the sun of heaven ever shone.
The burden which the fit have to bear has often been referred to by Dr.
MacGregor, who states in one of his reports, "Wives and husbands, parents of bastards, all alike are encouraged by lavish charity (falsely so called) to entirely shirk their responsibilities in the well grounded assurance that public money will be forth-coming to keep them and their families in quite as comfortable position as their hardworking and independent neighbours." The state can not decree that men shall marry, or that women shall marry, or that women shall procreate.

All it can do is to discover why its subjects are not fertile, and remove the causes so far as it is possible.
As people become educated they become conscious of their limitations, and endeavour to break through them and better their conditions.
The more difficult this process is, the less likely will men and women be to incur the burden of a large family.

The more the conditions of existence are improved, the more completely is each man's wish realized, and the more readily will he undertake the responsibilities of a family.
If the State can and will lighten the burden of taxation and modify the strain and stress of life, it will indirectly encourage procreation.
No direct encouragement is possible.