Palmerston made up his mind as early as September 1832 that if the Sultan is beat his empire may tumble to pieces, and the way in which the fragments may be disposed of may essentially affect the balance of power in Europe; Russia would profit by the scramble, to a degree which might be highly inconvenient to her neighbors. It is true that if we repel Mehemet's advances & the French receive them, and he should hold his ground, French influence will gain strength in Egypt, but after all perhaps that would not do us any great harm till we went to war with France, and then our naval superiority would bring us back the friendship of Mehemet who would not like his navy to be sent to an English port.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about Palmerston's anti-Egyptian policy (loc 254, 393) — here we see Palmerston's actual strategic reasoning about why the Ottoman empire's collapse mattered to Europe's balance of power.

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 1537