To fill out what Purejoy was saying: Old Sarum was the most notorious ‘rotten borough’. It obviously it is / was no laughing matter but the style of this reminded me of a C19th Mark Steel:
..“Rotten Boroughs,” i.e., towns which, centuries ago had a flourishing existence, continuing to send representatives to Parliament long after any human being had made his local habitation therein, and whose very names would have perished from the land, but that they were annually recorded on the Parliamentary rolls.
One of these has been immortalised by the discussions on the Reform bill -- Old Sarum. Not a soul had dwelt there since the Tudors ascended the English throne – not a tenement had been seen there since Columbus discovered America – nor could the vestiges of its ruins be traced by the antiquarian eye of a Champollion or a Stephens.
This sand-hill, in 1832, sent as many members to Parliament as Lancashire, with a population of a million and a half.
From ‘Sketches of Reforms and Reformers’ by H Brewster Stanton (1850) p166 – on Google Books.