But why should the property qualification be restricted to incomes from real estate? Why should not incomes from personal property also qualify? It was inevitable that these questions should be asked insistently and urgently with the increasing rise of wealthy merchants and manufacturers ambitious of taking part in public life. Nevertheless, it was not until 1838—six years after the great Reform Act, which really opened the doors of the House of Commons to the middle classes—that it was provided by a statute passed by the Whig Parliament that general property or professional incomes should also serve to qualify. In all other respects the law remained unchanged. The county Member had still to have an income of £600 a year, the borough Member had still to have an income of £300 a year, and both were still required to swear to their qualifications at the Table of the House and supply particulars to the Clerk. Twenty years elapsed before the property test for the House of Commons was finally abolished. The year before—that is to say, in 1857—there was a painful parliamentary scandal in connection with the property qualification. The return of Edward Auchmuty Glover for Beverley was petitioned against, and as the result of the trial the election was declared void on the ground that he was not possessed of the qualifying income. Glover was, by order of the House, tried at the Old Bailey for having made a false declaration at the Table that he was qualified. The jury convicted, but recommended the prisoner to mercy, as this was the first prosecution for such an offence, and as it was notorious that declarations as to the possession of the property qualification were loosely made by Members of Parliament. A sentence of three-months’ imprisonment as a first-class misdemeanant was, however, imposed. In the following year Locke King—a private Member who cleared the statute book of many obsolete measures—introduced a Bill for the abolition of the property qualification, which, though it encountered considerable opposition in both Houses, went through; and since June, 1858, the penniless man, as well as the landless man, has been eligible for membership of the House of Commons.