The Methodist Conference of 1829 determined to establish an official newspaper to be known as _The Christian Guardian_. Ryerson was elected as the first editor and was sent to New York to procure the plant. The paper started with a circulation of 500, which in three years was increased to some 3,000. Besides defending Methodist principles and institutions, the paper made a strong stand for civil liberty, temperance, education, and missionary work. It soon came to be looked upon as one of the leading journals of Upper Canada. Ryerson gave up the position of editor in 1832, and the following year made a trip to England to negotiate a union between the Canadian Methodist Conference and the Wesleyan Conference of England. The union was consummated. Ryerson returned to Canada and was re-elected editor of the _Guardian_. While in England, he had interviews with Earl Ripon, Lord Stanley and other public men, to whom he gave valuable information concerning Canadian affairs, especially those connected with the vexed question of the status of the Anglican Church. On his return to Canada, in 1833, Ryerson published in the _Guardian_ "Impressions Made by My Late Visit to England." In this article he gave his estimate of Tories, Whigs, and Radicals. He saw much to admire in the moderate Tories, little to praise in the Whigs, and much to condemn in the Radicals. His strictures on the latter called down upon him the wrath and invective of William Lyon Mackenzie. To some extent Ryerson's articles led the constitutional reformers in Upper Canada to separate themselves from those reformers who were prepared to establish a republican form of government in order to secure equal political and civil rights. To many of his old friends it seemed that Ryerson had given up championing liberty and had become a Tory. Many were ready to accuse him of self-seeking in his desire to conciliate the party of privilege. One reverend brother,[5] writing to him, says: "I can only account for your strange and un-Ryersonian conduct and advice on one principle--that there is something ahead which you, through your superior political spy-glass, have discovered and thus shape your course, while we landlubbers, short-sighted as we are, have not even heard of it." Hundreds of subscribers gave up the _Guardian_ as a protest against the views of its editor, but as the crisis approached which culminated in the Rebellion of '37 and '38, the tide of public opinion turned in Ryerson's favour. [5] Rev. Jas. Evans, of Niagara District. See part of letter in "Story of My Life," page 131.