Mr. Malthus adds to these denunciations of the Poor Law Act of Elizabeth, as carried out in 1805, the following: “If this clause were really and _bonâ fide_ put into execution, and the shame attending the receiving of parish relief worn off, every labouring man might marry as early as he pleased, under the certain prospect of having all his children properly provided for; and, as according to the supposition, there would be no check on population from the consequences of poverty after marriage, the increase of population would be rapid beyond example in old States. After what has been said in the former part of this work, it is submitted to the reader whether the utmost exertions of the enlightened government could, in this case, make the food keep pace with the population, much less a more arbitrary effort, the tendency of which is certainly rather to diminish than to increase the funds for the maintenance of productive labour.” In the year 1880 it was found by the census of our most flourishing colony of New Zealand that the population of those fertile islands had actually been able to double in eleven years. But, as Mr. Malthus observes: “After a country has once ceased to be in the peculiar situation of a new colony, we shall always find that in the actual state of its cultivation, or in that state which may rationally be expected from the most enlightened government, the increase of its food can never allow for any length of time an unrestricted increase of population, and, therefore, the due execution of the clause in the 43rd of Elizabeth, as a permanent law, is a physical impossibility.” One only circumstance, Mr. Malthus seems to think, in the administration of the English Poor Laws at the commencement of this century prevented them from plunging the country into ruin. This was the condition that they contained that each parish should maintain its own poor. “As each parish,” he says, “is obliged to maintain its own poor, it is naturally fearful of increasing their numbers, and every land-holder is, in consequence, more inclined to pull down than to build cottages. This deficiency of cottages operates necessarily as a strong check to marriage, and this check is probably the principal reason why we have been able to continue the system of the poor laws so long.”