_March 24th._--The dissolution took place on Saturday, and all the world is busy about the elections; many places are without candidates, or with very bad ones, and unable to find good ones. The dinner at the Mansion House the other day to the Ministers was a sort of triumph to Palmerston, who was rapturously received and cheered. He made a very bad speech, but which did very well for such an audience. It was full of claptraps and reiterations of the exploded charges of coalitions, &c., which he is not ashamed to harp upon, and in his address to Tiverton he talks of the 'combination only formed last session' to turn him out. I find myself, _malgré moi_, thrown back into my old state of antagonism towards Palmerston, and what is very paradoxical, I am so without any hostility to his Government or any desire for its being overthrown, for I cannot descry any chance of a better, or, indeed, any possibility of forming another able to carry on affairs at all; but I am inexpressibly disgusted at the egregious folly of the country at his being made such an idol in this ridiculous way, and at the false and hypocritical pretences upon which this dissolution has been founded, and the enormous and shameful lying with which the country is deluged. I long to write, print, and publish the truth, and to expose this miserable delusion; but I repress the desire, because I cannot do so without exciting bitter personal animosities, probably quarrels, and I can see no reasonable hope of producing any effects which would sufficiently repay me for such consequences. [Sidenote: THE LIDDELL _v._ WESTERTON CASE.] The day before yesterday Pemberton Leigh gave judgement in the Privy Council in the case of Liddell and Westerton; the Judicial Committee reversed in great measure the judgements in the Courts below of Dr. Lushington and Sir John Dodson, but not entirely. It was a very able judgement, and prepared with great care and research, and so moderately and fairly framed that it was accepted unanimously by the Committee, and even by the Bishops of Canterbury and London, both Low Churchmen. It was drawn up by Pemberton Leigh himself, and its publication will give the world in general some idea of his great ability, with the extent of which few are acquainted. It is a very singular thing that in such times as these, and when there is such a dearth of able men and so great a demand for them, that he should voluntarily condemn himself to a state of comparative obscurity, and refuse to take the station in public life which it would be difficult to find any other man so well qualified to fill.