The brother of Charles Buller (June 9^th), he was educated at Truro Grammar School, the University of Edinburgh and Trinity College, Cambridge and he was called to the Bar (Lincoln’s Inn) in 1834.

In 1838, he served on a Special Council that administered Lower Canada following a rebellion, recommending that the official language should be English and not French and that the Protestant faith should be the established religion. 

In the report, Buller proposed a system of elementary, secondary and tertiary education funded jointly by a land tax and Treasury funding, essentially laying the foundations for today’s Canadian education system.

Buller became Crown Attorney in Ceylon 1840 before being appointed to the Supreme Court of Calcutta in 1848.