Segar. — The Population of New Zealand. 463 



it is not part of my present plan, but it is important to 

 observe that the nature of both is such as to leave us no hope 

 for its diminution in the future, whereas there is no necessary 

 limit to its growth short of the disappearance of the family, 

 though the love of parenthood instinctive in the race gives 

 us a moral guarantee that the child will not altogether dis- 

 appear from the home. The child, however, may still be 

 with us and yet not in numbers sufficient to increase or even 

 to keep up the population ; and, whatever will be the limit 

 ultimately reached in this or in any other country, the steady 

 unchecked fall of birth-rates makes it appear unlikely that in 

 the course of a few years the practice of restricting families 

 will fall very far short of the limit required to produce a sta- 

 tionary state. 



That this prospect is of vast moment all will allow, but 

 that it is to be regretted all will not agree. Many will, from 

 religious motives, refuse to grant the possibility of good 

 arising from a condition of things consequent on what may 

 appear a vice ; but there is no escaping the fact that a volun- 

 tary stoppage of increase of population is the only thing that 

 can prevent the same effect being brought about ultimately 

 by misery, hardship, and disease. True, we might increase 

 and multiply much further yet, in this part of the world at 

 least, with no risk of consequent suffering ; but it happens 

 that the very populations to whom increase might even be 

 beneficial are the very ones that have most conspicuously 

 adopted the practice that must make future increase slow 

 indeed, when in a few years, by reason of the changed age- 

 distribution of the people, the death-rate has risen to a higher 

 and more permanent level. 



It will indeed be remarkable if, in these parts of the world, 

 the future shows that we are already near the time when 

 governments, colonial and municipal, may cease to allow for 

 future increases of requirements, and the unearned increment 

 will cease to annoy financial reformers. 



Old-age Pensions. 

 We have seen that the population of sixty-five years of 

 age and over, and therefore qualified in respect to age for the 

 receipt of old-age pensions, will reach by 1911 a total of about 

 43,737. If the number of old-age pensioners and the cost of 

 the pensions increase proportionally with the number of old 

 people, the rate of increase in the cost of old-age pensions 

 will be altogether out of proportion to the rate of increase of 

 the population, and consequently, under normal circum- 

 stances, to the rate of increase of the resources of the country. 

 How far this disproportionate increase may extend has al- 

 ready been pointed out. If New Zealand had permanently 



