The year 1783 brought peace with England, but it found matters in a dangerous and unsettled state at home. After seven years of revolution it takes some time to bring a people down to the safe and sober jog-trot of every-day life. The lower classes were demoralized by the license and tumult of war, and by poverty; they were surly and turbulent, and showed a disposition to shake off yokes domestic as well as foreign,--the yoke of taxation in particular: for every man of them believed that he had already done more, suffered more, and paid more, than his fair share. The calamity of a worthless paper legal-tender currency added to the general discontent. Hence any public measure involving further disbursements met with angry opposition. Large arrears of pay were due to soldiers, and bounties had been promised to induce them to disband peacefully, and to compensate them for the depreciation of the currency. Congress had also granted five years' extra pay to officers, in lieu of the half-pay for life which was first voted. The army, in consequence, became very unpopular. A great clamor was raised against the Cincinnati Society, and factious patriots pretended to see in it the foundation of an hereditary aristocracy. The public irritability, excited by pretexts like these, broke out into violence. In Connecticut, mobs collected to prevent the army officers from receiving the certificates for the five years' pay, and a convention was assembled to elect men pledged to non-payment. Shay and Shattuck headed an insurrection in Massachusetts. There were riots at Exeter, in New Hampshire. When Shay's band was defeated and driven out of the State, Rhode Island--then sometimes called Rogue's Island, from her paper-money operations--refused to give up the refugee rebels. The times looked gloomy. The nation, relieved from the foreign pressure which had bound the Colonies together, seemed tumbling to pieces; each State was an independent sovereignty, free to go to ruin in its own way. The necessity for a strong central government to replace English rule became evident to all judicious men; for, as one Pelatiah Webster remarked, "Thirteen staves, and ne'er a hoop, cannot make a barrel." The Hartford Wits had fought out the war against King George; they now took up the pen against King Mob, and placed themselves in rank with the friends of order, good government, and union. Hence the "Anarchiad." An ancient epic on "the Restoration of Chaos and Substantial Blight" was dug up in the ruins of an old Indian fort, where Madoc, the mythical Welsh Columbus, or some of his descendants, had buried it. Colonel Humphreys, who had read the "Rolliad" in England, suggested the plan; Barlow, Hopkins, and Trumbull joined with him in carrying it out. Extracts from the "Anarchiad" were prepared when wanted, and the verses applied fresh to the enfeebled body politic. They chanted the dangers and difficulties of the old Federation and the advantages of the new Constitution.