My friends - I have occasionally discussed here the county court system in KY and the JP region prior to the War Between the States, primarily under the 51 year duration of KY's second constitution. One of the interesting aspects of this period was the fairly common practice of "selling" sheriff and county clerk positions. Sheriffs' jobs were, in some parts of KY, routinely auctioned off to the highest bidder. The deputy sheriffs' jobs were parceled out much more privately than that of the high sheriff, since the sheriffs appointed their own deputies, subject to the approval of the county court. Thomas James of Hickman County, wrote to Gov. Owsley in 1845 that the deputy sheriff of Hickman County(who had "farmed" the office from the Sheriff) was so lacking in ability as to be inept, insolvent, corrupt and the leader of lawless mobs whose objective was to put down the civil authorities. The county clerks, who were appointed by the court, were also a part of this type of corruption. The county and circuit court clerks positions were sometimes sold to the same man, while, in some cases, the outgoing clerks were given the responsibility, for a share of the profits, to select an incoming clerk. In some cases, the office was even leased, as was the situation in Montgomery County in the 1840's, when the office was leased at the rate of $250 per year for four years. The reasons for this sort of corruption were complicated and founded in politics, patronage and power(in the case of the sheriffs), and money(in the case of the county clerks). Even though the "buying" of such offices was legally prohibited in 1801, the practice remained common, and even the KY Court of Appeals, which seems to support the legislation, appeared to reverse itself in a ruling some years later. The buying and selling of these offices was one of the major issues in the Constitutional Convention of 1849, which effectively, if not immediately, ended this practice in KY. As we observe some of the corruption in government today, it brings meaning to the adage, "Everything old is new again". -B ====================================================================