Charles Buller

As much as I would like to tell all about Charles Buller (1806-1848), there is so much to say that I daren’t start or I might never stop. So instead I have provided some links at the bottom of the page.

In Australia, Buller is remembered by the name of the snow-capped mountain (Mount Buller, just in case there was some confusion). Apparently it was named by Major Mitchell on his journey to what Mitchell referred to as Australia Felix – nowadays more or less known as Victoria. That might be so, but I checked out the book Mitchell wrote about that journey¹ and, on 11 Oct 1836, as he is passing some peaks that seem to answer to the location of Mt. Buller he observes that it is years since he has seen snowy ‘pics’ (that is how he spells ‘peaks’) and he makes no mention of any naming going on. Still, maybe all that is in more detailed diaries or reports. For naming rights Mitchell is the key candidate, so I guess it must be so.

The nice thing about naming a mountain after Buller is that the radicals in the British parliament, of whom Buller was one, had been nicknamed with an anglicised version of the French nickname for the sans-culottes, primary movers of the French revolution. (Read more about this at Wikipedia, The Columbia Encyclopedia, and here.) The sans-culottes sat high in the assembly, and so were known as ‘the mountain’. Thankfully their political tendencies do not transfer directly to the utilitarians – the sans-culottes were also primary drivers of the rather nasty events of that revolution – but the general position of radicalism does transfer.

Here is an example of the use of the term, in a letter from Lord Brougham to Earl Grey, 14 Dec, 1809. ²

I forgot to say t’other day, in answer to your last letter, how well I remembered the passage in your speech alluded to. I have repeated it a thousand times in answer to the mountain; but I think them excessively unfair and even tricky in their way of stating things, and one can’t help recollecting that when you were in office they said nothing of this kind.

This is considerably earlier than the philosophical radical period (after 1832), but, as I understand it, the nickname continued.

Buller is also a good candidate for having a mountain named after him because he was tall himself. In Tait’s Edinburgh magazine (William Tate) he is described so:

‘[Buller] is a fine, manly-looking, sensible Radical; good-humoured and bouyant in expression, about six-feet high, and stout in proportion to his height.’

The average height recorded (for the criminal classes, anyhow) at the time for males was around 5′5”.³.

All this goes to remind us when we are skiing on Mt. Buller that it is all about pleasure - the foundation of Bentham’s philosophy. Avoid the broken leg though – that’s the pain bit of Bentham’s ideas.

Enough of mountains.

Buller was criticised as being too fond of a laugh to be taken as a serious force in parliament. I suppose if you are going to be sidelined one could not hope for a more agreeable reason. Meanwhile, Carlyle, who was his tutor, waxed lyrical about Buller’s character and abilities. Despite a tendency for some to discount Buller on the grounds of flippancy, the Benthamite radicals went on to make the most fundamental changes to the way government was done – in the UK, but most particularly in the colonies. In all this Buller was a key player. So really, in the end, good humour won the day. The real obstacle to Buller’s political career was that worst career move of all – premature death. He died at 42 years old.

You can get a sense of Buller’s humour in his Responsible Government For Colonies. His description of the Colonial Office in Downing Street is a mix of Yes Minister [p65ff], The Office [around p74], and Kafka [p94-96].

Links

Responsible Government For Colonies.

Buller in Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online

Buller in Wikipedia

Books

Wrong, EM, Charles Buller and Responsible Government, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1926

William Bland, Letters to Charles Buller, Junior, Esq, M. P., from The Australian Patriotic Association, Sydney, Printed by D. L. Welch, Atlas Office, George Street, Opposite the Barrack Gate, 1849

Report and Despatches of the Earl of Durham of British North America, London, Ridgways, 1839  (Buller was part of this mission and had considerable input, at one time being considered the main author of the report. See at Google Books. Oddly, there is a repeat version at Google Books here. I haven’t checked to see if there is info in one that is not in the other.)

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1. Three expeditions into the interior of eastern Australia : with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the present colony of New South Wales by T.L. Mitchell. Vol 2., p295 [↩]

2. From Henry Lord Brougham, The Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham, William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, 1871, 3 vols, p487 [↩]

3. See Paul Johnson and Stephen Nicholas, Male and Female Living Standards in England and Wales, 1812-1857: Evidence From Criminal Height Records, The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 48, No. 3, (Aug., 1995), pp. 470-481 [↩]