The programme of the new administration had in it a dash of boldness. It included militia and bankruptcy bills, plans towards opening for settlement the great north-western territories, and the determination to set the building of the intercolonial railway on the move. Many of these measures McGee gladly welcomed as steps towards the establishment of that for which he laboured, the great new northern nation. But that stern reformer, George Brown, found one grave omission in this scheme of legislation. Sandfield Macdonald flatly refused to carry into effect the principle so sacred to the editor of the _Globe_, representation by population. He was personally doubtful of its value as a medicine for Canadian ills, and he felt that the line of least difficulty would be to leave it alone. In its place he adopted as the hinge principle of the government's action, the double majority, begging that it be given a fair trial. But Brown was not satisfied. In his mind the Reform party existed primarily to establish representation by population. A ministry that failed to accomplish this was no reform government. "Better a thousand times," thundered the _Globe_, "had it been that the Cartier-Macdonald government with all its wickedness should have been recalled than that so many leading men of the Liberal Opposition should have sacrificed their principles and destroyed the moral influence which they justly possessed with the electors of Upper Canada." Such hostility was unveiled, although Brown alleged that he was willing to give the government a chance. His lack of friendliness was ominous, and the fall of the ministry a year later was largely due to the fact that George Brown had failed to give it his blessing.