Equally impolitic was the attitude of the President toward questions of public policy in his first message to Congress. Just when the opposition was in a fluid state and the winds of conflicting doctrines were ruffling the surface of national politics, Adams gave utterance to opinions on the functions of government which were bound to alienate many of his followers. Entertaining no doubts as to constitutional limitations upon the powers of the National Government, he advocated not only the construction of roads and canals, but the establishment of observatories and a national university. His program included governmental aid to the arts, mechanical and literary, and to the sciences, "ornamental and profound." He was prepared to give encouragement not only to manufacturing but to agriculture and to commerce. Many of these were objects which President Jefferson had recommended to the consideration of Congress in 1806; but whereas he had urged the adoption of amendments to the Constitution which would authorize Congress to provide for roads and canals and education, Adams seemed oblivious to the limitations of the Constitution. In much alarm Jefferson suggested to Madison the desirability of having Virginia adopt a new set of resolutions, bottomed on those of 1798, and directed against the acts for internal improvements. In March, 1826, the general assembly declared that all the principles of the earlier resolutions applied "with full force against the powers assumed by Congress" in passing acts to protect manufactures and to further internal improvements. That the Administration would meet with opposition in Congress, whatever its program might be, was a foregone conclusion. The only question was whether the diverse and mutually hostile factions which had followed the fortunes of Crawford, Calhoun, and Jackson could coalesce into a consistent opposition. The first test occurred when the Administration proposed the Panama mission. The overthrow of the authority of Spain in South America had left the way clear for the long-projected union of the republics. Early in the year 1825, the ministers of Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia waited on Clay to learn whether the United States would accept an invitation to a great council or congress which had been called by the revolutionist Bolivar, now President of Colombia. The project appealed strongly to Clay. A league of young republics in the New World to offset the Holy Alliance in Europe was, as his biographer remarks, "one of those large, generous conceptions well calculated to fascinate his ardent mind." The imagination of the President was not so easily touched: he instructed Clay to inquire more particularly into the purposes of the congress.