close relationship. The memorandum was not an Ottoman document but only the personal views of Reşid Pasha. He told Lord Palmerston that reform within the Ottoman Sublime Porte was greatly needed and finally doable following the death of Mahmud II and the rise of the young Abdulmecid, who needed to be led in the right direction. Reşid Pasha also wrote that the protection and security of the people was mandatory if they were to accept the new reforms he wanted to institute, since their previous rejections were based on the fear of further prosecution by the corrupt Sublime Porte. Furthermore, he put forth that European support and cooperation was mandatory and essential for the preservation of the Ottoman state. All of these thoughts would later appear in the Rose Garden Edict only a few months later. His main goal was to ensure the power of the sultanate while at the same time establishing a strong central bureaucracy within the Sublime Porte to indefinitely postpone the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. During this same time period, Reşid Pasha also conferred with Austrian diplomat Prince Metternich on government institutional reform. Another circumstance was the ongoing crisis with Muhammad Ali of Egypt. The Ottoman Empire was at this time also trying to ensure the support of the Great Powers. The Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane, Reşid hoped, would gain foreign and especially British support for the Ottoman Empire due to its better treatment of its subjects, especially the Christian raya. By the end of the summer 1839, the Sublime Porte held a meeting attended by Reşid Pasha, Grand Vizier Koca Hüsrev Mehmed Pasha, and other major bureaucrats. During the meeting, after reading a memorandum from the Sultan, the officials created a petition for the Sultan in which they called for the protection of individual rights and property and the end of the corruption within the government, while all new laws were to remain under the principles of shar’ia law. This petition would become the Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane, or the "Edict of Gülhane." Reforms Mustafa Reşid Pasha is credited with being the father of the Tanzimat Reforms, which lasted from 1839 with the reading of the Rose Garden Edict, to 1876 and the creation of the constitution. During this period, Reşid Pasha would serve six times as Grand Vizier and several times as Foreign Minister. Reşid thought that the Ottoman existence was based on