Lower Canada Rebellion
When news of the arrest of the Patriote leaders reached Upper Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie launched an armed rebellion in December 1837. In the meantime, filibusters from the United States, the Hunter Patriots, formed a small militia and attacked Windsor, Upper Canada, to support the Canadian Patriots. This resulted in the declaration of martial law by the Lower Canadian government.
Upper Canada Rebellion
In November 1837, in the lead-up to the Political Union's Constitutional Convention, Mackenzie published a satire in the "Constitution", a round table discussion by such luminaries as John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and William Pitt and others, said to be a "convention sitting in this township for the purpose of circulating political information, weighing opinions as to the best means of improving the civil institutions of the country, and endeavoring to determine whether the British Constitution, Sir F. Head's government or Independence would be the most likely to prove advantageous to the people." As part of this satire, he published a draft republican constitution for Upper Canada. This constitution closely resembled the objectives spelled out in the constitution of the Canadian Alliance Society in 1834; it called for an elected governor, legislative council (senate), House of Assembly and magistracy, all by secret ballot. It was egalitarian, prohibiting both slavery and the granting of "hereditary emoluments, privileges, or honors." It also called for a separation of church and state, and barred the clergy from seeking election, or serving in any civil or military office. It guaranteed the rights to personal property, to freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly. But tied to these rights to personal property and egalitarian democracy were severe restrictions on chartering corporations; starting from the premise that "Labour is the only means of creating wealth" it placed a constitutional prohibition on chartering either banks or trading companies.