The other arguments that appellants make are: "That the implication in all of the county officers' salary statutes is that such salaries are to be governed by the population of the counties at any given time; that until the exact population were known, an assumed population, arrived at by some possible method, should be used; that since the population is known it would be expedient and right to use the determined population as a basis to determine the salaries of all officers of a natural class as has been done in the case of prosecuting attorneys." This contention, of course, cannot be sustained since the Legislature had the authority to make the presidential election vote the basis for fixing the salary of circuit clerks and chose that as the basis rather than the census. The expediency argument was evidently made to the Fifty-seventh General Assembly, which was the proper place to make it, and that body has by its acts as above pointed out now exercised its legislative discretion in favor of appellants' contention that the population as shown by the United States census is the best basis for fixing the salaries of all county officers and has adopted that basis for the future. However, from 1887 up to 1933 it had preferred to use the election vote basis and this case must be ruled upon the law in force while Perkins was in office. This court has previously held that a circuit clerk of McDonald County who held office prior to Perkins, was entitled to be paid according to the presidential election vote method of classification. [Cartright v. McDonald County, 319 Mo. 848, 5 S.W.2d 54.]