In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall;* to-day taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.*
All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures — the creatures of this chronicle among the rest — along the roads that lay before them.
Abridged
From ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ (1859) by Charles Dickens (1812-1870). With acknowledgements to: ‘The Dickens Companions’ (1988); The Annual Register, or, a View of the History, Politicks, and Literature for the Year Volume 18 (1775); and ‘The Crisis: A British Defense of American Rights’ (1775), edited by Neil L. York.
According to the Register, Parliament ordered the public burning of two pamphlets on March 6th that year. One was The Crisis with Respect to America, printed for one T. Becket. This tended to support the Government’s use of force against the Americans, but went too far and suggested that the King could levy taxes that Parliament had voted down; this was denounced as “a false, malicious, and dangerous libel, subversive of the principles of the glorious revolution [in 1688], to which we owe our present invaluable constitution; and of the rights of the people”. Immediately afterwards, attention focused on Issue 3 of The Crisis, published in February 4th, 1775, which took the form of an extremely outspoken, not to say abusive, letter addressed to George III, by enthusiastic supporters of the American revolution. In their resolution the Commons called it a “false, malicious, and seditious libel”; the Lords added the word “treasonous” for good measure, but then took it out again.
* These examples seem to be taken, again, from the Annual Register of 1775; the convict hanged for stealing a sixpence was mentioned among four executions at Tyburn on February 15th.