In Chapter 1 of "A Tale of Two Cities," what is indicated about the character of the English people of this period of 1775?What is indicated by...

In the very first chapter of "A Tale of Two Cities," Dickens draws parallels between the lawlessness of the two countries. France, under "the guidance of her Cristian pastors," entertains herself by having people severely punished if they do not bow to the passing clergy.  For instance, one youth has "his hands cut off, his toungue torn out with pincers" and is burned to death because he does not bow as a "dirty procession of monks passes him. Dickens also mentions that

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting.  Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, too place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsteres' warehouse for security; the highwayman in the dar was a City tradesman in the light, and being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away....

Crime abounds, man's inhumanity to man is prevalent.  Especially in the justice system, this cruelty is apparent.  The hangman is busy, "today taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and tomorrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpense."  These allusions to the ease at which sentences of death were handed down in the Old Bailey are familiar to readers of Dickens's other novels. The difference, however, between England and France is that the English perceive themselves morally better:

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeing smoothness down hill.

Nevertheless, the foreshadowing of the declines of both countries in their moral degradation is apparent.  England will soon be engaged in a war with its colonies in the American Revolution, and France will be engaged in its bloodiest civil disruption, the French Revolution.  The first of many parallels that Dickens draws in his poignant tale of devotion and sacrifice, this turmoil of both countries acts as the background for the novel.