I forget the URL, but I had seen a site with 31 backlinks that had Page Rank 3. The puzzling thing was that only handful of backlinks had any PR, I believe there were couple of PR 2 links and 5 or so PR 1 link. I guess it is good to have lots of backlinks, but there seem to be some exception to this as well.
"Quality and relevant backlinks will increase your pages SEO and PR. If you want your sub-pages to have high PRs that's a possibility as well, but assuming your site is just one niche you really don't need it. With a high PR on your main page google will index your smaller pages and, depending on what they are, in time they'll get their own PR. Again, this isn't necessary by any means. Millions of backlinks doesn't equate to high PageRank (PR). It will probably equate to high search engine rankings though. A higher and relevance backlink more than millions of backlinks doesn't relevance topic." What they above said above. You might want to read this article here.