George Miller (historian)

Miller's college lectures were published in eight parts between 1816 and 1828 and reissued in four volumes in 1832 as History, philosophically illustrated, from the fall of the Roman Empire, to the French Revolution, which went through three editions.

As a result, Miller developed a lecture series on modern European history that found an audience "more remarkable for its intelligence than its numbers" at first but which gradually grew in popularity until it had to be delivered in the Examination Hall.

[4] Miller claimed that the lectures "slowly and gradually formed ... requiring little more than to be combined together in an orderly arrangement" and that they were not the result of any "enthusiasm of religious feeling",[5] however, later commentators have described the lecturers as "pietistic"[4] and Miller devoted considerable space in the preface to the four-volume edition (1832) to a description of the method by which he reconciled the more unpleasant parts of historical fact with his religious faith, arguing that he was: "not required by his theory to vindicate, or to censure, any transaction, all being according to it, conducive, directly or indirectly, to the same end ...

He had only to endeavour to show how each transaction has been by its consequences a part of a combined whole, having for its general issue the improvement of human society; how each leading individual, whatever may have been the motive, or the quality of his conduct, was an agent, though free and unconscious, in the execution of the plan of a wise and beneficent providence.

The college was never established and, as far as is known, Castlereagh did not reply to the letter, but it provides evidence of Miller's eclectic views on education and accounts of the form of university instruction current at the time.