<P> So riled is Dickens at the brutality of English law that he depicts some of its punishments with sarcasm: "the whipping - post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action". He faults the law for not seeking reform: "Whatever is, is right" is the dictum of the Old Bailey . The gruesome portrayal of quartering highlights its atrocity . </P> <P> Dickens wants his readers to be careful that the same revolution that so damaged France will not happen in Britain, which (at least at the beginning of the book) is shown to be nearly as unjust as France; Ruth Glancy has argued that Dickens portrays France and England as nearly equivalent at the beginning of the novel, but that as the novel progresses, England comes to look better and better, climaxing in Miss Pross's pro-Britain speech at the end of the novel . But his warning is addressed not to the British lower classes, but to the aristocracy . He repeatedly uses the metaphor of sowing and reaping; if the aristocracy continues to plant the seeds of a revolution through behaving unjustly, they can be certain of harvesting that revolution in time . The lower classes do not have any agency in this metaphor: they simply react to the behaviour of the aristocracy . In this sense it can be said that while Dickens sympathizes with the poor, he identifies with the rich: they are the book's audience, its "us" and not its "them". "Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms . Sow the same seed of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind". </P> <P> With the people starving and begging the Marquis for food, his uncharitable response is to let the people eat grass; the people are left with nothing but onions to eat and are forced to starve while the nobles are living lavishly upon the people's backs . Every time the nobles refer to the life of the peasants it is only to destroy or humiliate the poor . </P> <P> Some have argued that in A Tale of Two Cities Dickens reflects on his recently begun affair with eighteen - year - old actress Ellen Ternan, which was possibly platonic but certainly romantic . Lucie Manette has been noted as resembling Ternan physically . </P>

A tale of two cities it was the best of times it was the worst of times meaning