"The power of the government acts to preserve its reasonable and legitimate rights and to prevent illegitimate movements, by which I mean the prevention and removal of sins and abuses arising from authoritarian rule by an individual or a few individuals, so as to allow all the peoples making up our body without exception to enjoy freedom and justice. This is the right and the benefit of freedom in the civil social body. Since the link between the laws and interests based on legitimate consultation and conditions, and the best of them is fixed in what these principles demand, we instructed in our law  that announced our rule that it was necessary to organize a general assembly and since the Basic Law that mandates its organization in this demand was organized by a memorandum at a special association formed from biased ministers and leading religious scholars and the rest of the men and officials of our higher state, and it was ratified by the assembly of our representatives after scrutiny, the articles included in it were only connected with the rights of the greater Islamic Caliphate and the magnificent Ottoman Sultanate and the freedom of Ottomans and their equality and the authorities of the representatives and officials." The first Constitution of the Ottoman State (Kanun-u Esasi) was proclaimed by Abdul Hamid II in 1876.