As the practice of keeping a register of persons entitled to vote at parliamentary elections did not begin until this time, it is impossible to say precisely how much the Act of 1832 increased the size of the electorate. But from returns made just prior to the passage of the Act,[205:1] it would appear that the number of borough electors in England and Wales was then about 180,000; whereas immediately after the Act had gone into effect it was 282,398.[205:2] The total increase in the borough electorate, which was the one chiefly affected, was therefore about 100,000, and a great part of this increase consisted of the voters in the large towns that had been given seats for the first time by the Act. The new system was in no sense either democratic or proportionate to population. The average ratio of electors to population for the whole United Kingdom was about one in thirty; but the variation in different constituencies and different parts of the kingdom was very great. In the English and Welsh counties the ratio ran all the way from one in five in Westmoreland, to one in thirty-seven in Lancashire, one in thirty-nine in Middlesex, and one in sixty in Merioneth. In the English and Welsh boroughs it ran from nearly one in four in Bedford and Aylesbury, where practically all adult males were voters, to one in forty-five in the manufacturing towns. In Scotland even a smaller part of the population enjoyed the franchise. In the counties the ratio ran from one in twenty-four in Selkirk, to one in ninety-seven in Sutherland; and in boroughs or districts, from one in twenty in the Elgin district, to one in forty in that of Linlithgow. In the Irish counties it ran from one in fifty-eight in Carlow, to one in two hundred and sixty-one in Tyrone; and in the boroughs from one in nine in Carrickfergus and Waterford, to one in fifty-three in Tralee. The proportion of members of Parliament to population was far more uneven still. As reformers at a later date were constantly pointing out, one half of the borough population of England was contained in sixteen boroughs, and elected only thirty-four members; the other half, numbering less than two and a half millions, still returning two hundred and ninety-three members; while the counties with eight millions of people returned one hundred and forty-four members. Thus it happened that less than one fifth of the population in England elected nearly one half of the representatives; and as these came from the boroughs it can hardly be said that the borough members represented numbers.[206:1] [Sidenote: Later Reform Bills.]