Page:Carroll (1884).djvu/25

 have one Member) assigned to it; and so on. If a District contained almost exactly 15,000, it could not fairly be determined, by this Table, whether it ought to return one Member, or two. In such a case, it would be best to change the boundaries of the District, so as to increase or diminish the number of Electors by 2,000 or so.

Comparing the results of the two Formulæ, we see that, for Districts whose population is about 27,000, it matters very little which Formula we use: but, for small Districts, Formula (b) assigns too many Members, and, for large Districts, too few; e.g. 13,000 Electors ought to return only one Member—Formula (b) gives them two; 60,000 ought to return 9—Formula (b) gives them 8.

We will now examine the effect of counting the population of a District, and not the Electors only.

Here, for $E⁄M + D$, we must substitute $P⁄M + D$;


 * i.e. $36,000,000⁄840$, i.e. about 43,000.

Hence Formula (a) becomes

m = $e⁄43,000$ − 1