est the unjustifiable
course of the _Guardian_. The objection was that the paper "had
become party-political;" that "its course was disquieting to the
country, and disreputable to Wesleyan Methodism," ... etc. It is
not denied (adds Rev. J. Ryerson), that the _Guardian_ at this time
was very political for a religious journal....

On this Dr. Ryerson remarked--

It is true, as my brother has intimated, that the _Guardian_ was "very
political," because the Editor was intensely in earnest on the great
object for which he had been elected by the Conference.... The times of
his former proposed conciliations and compromises were now past. He felt
the awfulness of the crisis and the responsibility of his position. The
Reform party had been crushed by the rebellion of 1837, and the Reform
press silenced; there was, in fact, no Reform party. The high-church
party thought that their day of absolute power and ecclesiastical
monopoly had dawned. It had been agreed by Mr. W. L. Mackenzie and his
fellow rebels ... that Egerton Ryerson [should be their first victim].
He alone stood above successful calumny by the high-church party, and
backed as he was by his Canadian Methodist brethren, he determined to
defend to the last, the citadel of Canadian liberty....

He knew that, as in a final struggle for victory between two armies,
when that victory was trembling in the scales, the wavering of a single
battalion on either side might animate and decide victory in favour of
the enemy; so a compromising sentence or ambiguous word from the Editor
might rouse the high-church party to increased confidence and action,
and proportionally weaken the cause of civil and religious liberty in
Upper Canada. The Editor of the _Guardian_ had no fear, and he evinced
none.... I contended that all the political questions then pending had a
direct or indirect bearing on this great question; ... that I would not
be turned aside from the great object in view until it was obtained;
that the real object of the Government and of the Missionary Committee
was not so much to prevent the introduction of politics into the
_Guardian_, as the discussion of the clergy reserve question itself, and
of the equal religious rights of the people altogether, so that the
high-church party might be left in peaceable possession of their
exclusive privileges, and their unjust and immense monopolies, without
molestation or dispute.

Rev. J. Ryerson adds: