In fact, there was no longer any government; the artificial structure of human society was giving way entirely; things were returning to a state of nature.

This was not a revolution, but a dissolution.
Two causes excite and maintain the universal upheaval.

The first one is food shortages and dearth, which being constant, lasting for ten years, and aggravated by the very disturbances which it excites, bids fair to inflame the popular passions to madness, and change the whole course of the Revolution into a series of spasmodic stumbles.
When a stream is brimful, a slight rise suffices to cause an overflow.
So was it with the extreme distress of the eighteenth century.

A poor man, who finds it difficult to live when bread is cheap, sees death staring him in the face when it is dear.

In this state of suffering the animal instinct revolts, and the universal obedience which constitutes public peace depends on a degree more or less of dryness or damp, heat or cold.