Gladstonesque

Definitions

Characteristic or reminiscent of William Ewart Gladstone, especially as supportive of laissez-faire policies.

Examples

“To assume⟳ that the "theory" of the results of confiding in professional law-breakers (whether Irishmen or London roughs) is for a moment worthy of being considered from the same standpoint as the belief that wìthout the restraints of the law the same gentry will commit excesses, is indeed to beg⟳ the whole question⟳, and is thoroughly Gladstonesque.”

“It was a Victorian concept and its life force⟳ perished with the Victorian Age. Victorian in pomp and grandeur, Victorian in the public-school code of its Government, its Philistinism, its middle-class standards of virtue, its creaming of the large Victorian families for its administrators and soldiers, Victorian in the commercialism that mingled with highmindedness in Anglo-Indian relations, Victorian in its Gladstonesque view⟳ of the functions of Government, it was above all Victorian in its faith in the rule⟳ of law and political liberalism...”

“The relationship was one of mutual benefit: to the floundering, disunited movement of 1859 Bradlaugh gave unity, purpose and organisation, while the secularists in return⟳ paraded and spoke on his behalf, and clapped at the appropriate places in his Gladstonesque speeches.”

CEFR level