It is possible that the jingo policy of the Administration may have helped to produce all these results. It is probable that the same results would have followed had the Senate refused the mission to Panama. It is certainly most fortunate that these results were attained without the attendance of the representatives of the United States upon the congress. All possible entanglements were thus avoided, while the purposes of the Administration, in so far at least as they subserved the true interests of the country, were substantially accomplished. It is true that the special commercial advantages which Clay had hoped for were not secured, nor his dream of an American Confederacy under the protectorate of the United States realized. Neither were the President's ideas in regard to methods for settling mooted questions of international relations, nor those in regard to the advancement of religious liberty, fulfilled. But these things were all premature, to say the least, and none of them would, probably, have been helped onward by any discussion in the congress of the American nations. With the exception of the United States, those nations were altogether too immature to deal with such problems; and the United States itself was not sufficiently consolidated and powerful to assume the duties of instructor and guardian over them. It is not probable that any opportunity for doing good or receiving good was lost by the non-attendance of representatives {155} from the United States upon the deliberations of the Panama congress. It is far more probable that both the doing and the suffering of injury were escaped. While the question of the relation of the United States to the other states upon the American continents is by no means transitory, the question of the Panama mission was so, at least so much so as not to serve well as an issue for the division of the Republican party into two permanently hostile forces. [Sidenote: Adams on internal improvements in his message of December 6th, 1825.] [Sidenote: Van Buren's resolution against internal improvements.] The question of internal improvements was a better issue, from this point of view. In his first annual message President Adams took high national ground upon this subject. He seemed to attribute to the general Government unlimited power to construct roads and canals, establish universities and observatories, and to do any and every thing conducive to the improvement of the people. Clay himself, it is said, was a little staggered by the exceeding broadness of Mr. Adams' ideas. While Mr. Van Buren, the leader of the opposition in the Senate, offered a resolution in that body, a fortnight after the message, which declared that Congress did not possess the power to make roads and canals within the respective Commonwealths, and proposed the formation of an amendment to the Constitution, which should prescribe the powers that the general Government should have over the subject of internal improvements.