the province. Lacking the minimum capital needed to found the bank, the corporate leaders persuaded the government to subscribe for a quarter of its shares. During the 1830s, a third of the bank's board were Legislative or Executive Councillors, and the remainder all magistrates. Despite repeated attempts, the elected Legislature – which had chartered the bank – could not obtain details on the bank's workings. Mackenzie saw the bank as a prop of the Government and demanded farmers withdraw the money they had deposited in the bank and public confidence in the bank decreased. Demographic changes The government of Upper Canada feared a growing interest in American-inspired republicanism in the province because of the increase in immigration of American settlers to the province. The large number of migrants led American legislators to speculate that bringing Upper Canada into the American fold would be a "mere matter of marching". After the War of 1812 the colonial government prevented Americans from swearing allegiance, thereby making them ineligible to obtain land grants. Relations between the appointed Legislative Council and the elected Legislative Assembly became increasingly strained in the years after the war, over issues of immigration, taxation, banking and land speculation. Political unions The Upper Canada Central Political Union was organized in 1832–33 by Thomas David Morrison and collected 19,930 signatures on a petition protesting William Lyon Mackenzie's expulsion from the House of Assembly. The Reformers won a majority in the elections held in 1834 for the Legislative Assembly of the 12th Parliament of Upper Canada but the Family Compact held the majority in the Legislative Council. The union was reorganized as the Canadian Alliance Society in 1835 and adopted much of the platform of the Owenite National Union of the Working Classes in London, England, that were to be integrated into the Chartist movement in England. In pursuit of this democratic goal, the Chartists eventually staged a similar armed rebellion, the Newport Rising, in Wales in 1839. The Canadian Alliance Society was reborn as the Constitutional Reform Society in 1836, and led by the more moderate reformer, William W. Baldwin. The Society took its final form as the Toronto Political Union in 1837 and they organized local "Vigilance Committees" to elect delegates to a Constitutional Convention in July 1837. This became the organizational structure for the Rebellion and most of the rebel organizers were elected Constitutional Convention delegates. Francis Bond Head and