Canning died on Aug. 8, 1827, and was succeeded as premier by Lord Goderich. The duke was at once again offered the post of commander-in-chief, which he accepted on Aug. 17. On the fall of Lord Goderich's cabinet five months later Wellington be came prime minister (Jan. 9, 1828). He had declared some time before that it would be an act of madness for him to take this post ; but his sense of public duty led him to accept it when it was pressed upon him by the king. His cabinet included at first Huskisson, Palmerston and other followers of Canning. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts having been carried in the House of Commons in the session of 1828, Wellington, to the great disappointment of Tories like Lord Eldon, recommended the House of Lords not to offer further resistance, and the meas ure was accordingly carried through. In May Huskisson and Palmerston voted against the Government in the East Retford question; Huskisson resigned, and the other liberal members of the ministry followed suit. It was now hoped by the so-called Protestant party that Wellington, at the head of a more united cabinet, would offer a steady resistance to Catholic emancipation. Never were men more bitterly disappointed. The Clare election and the progress of the Catholic Association convinced both Wellington and Peel that the time had come when Catholic emancipation must be granted; and, submitting when further resistance would have led to civil war, the ministry itself brought in at the beginning of the session of 1829 a bill for the relief of the Catholics in the face of opposition from the king and from Wellington's own supporters. Wellington, who had hitherto always opposed Catholic emancipation, explained and justified his change of front in simple and impressive language. He had, however, to challenge the Earl of Winchelsea to a bloodless duel. No mischief resulted from the encounter.
As soon as Catholic emancipation was carried, the demand for parliamentary reform and extension of the franchise agitated Great Britain from end to end. The duke was ill informed as to the real spirit of the nation. He conceived the agitation for reform to be a purely fictitious one, worked up by partisans and men of disorder in their own interest. Wholly unaware of the strength of the forces which he was provoking, the duke, at the opening of the parliament which met after the death of George IV., declared against any parliamentary reform whatever. This declaration led to the immediate fall of his Government. Lord Grey, the chief of the new ministry, brought in the Reform bill, which was resisted by Wellington as long as anything was to be gained by resistance. When the creation of new peers was known to be imminent, however, Wellington was among those who counselled the abandonment of a hopeless struggle. His opposition
to reform made him for a while unpopular. He was hooted by the mob on the anniversary of Waterloo, and considered it necessary to protect the windows of Apsley House with iron shutters.
For the next two years the duke was in opposition. On the removal of Lord Althorp to the House of Lords in 1834, William IV. unexpectedly dismissed the Whig ministry and requested Wellington to form a cabinet. The duke, however, recommended that Peel should be at the head of the Government, and served under him, during the few months that his ministry lasted, as foreign secretary. On Peel's later return to power in 1841 Welling ton was again in the cabinet, but without departmental office be yond that of commander-in-chief. He supported Peel in his Corn Law legislation, and throughout all this later period of his life, whether in office or in opposition, gained the admiration of dis cerning men, and excited the wonder of zealots, by his habitual subordination of party spirit and party connection to whatever appeared to him the real interest of the nation. On Peel's defeat in 1846 the duke retired from active public life. He was now nearly eighty. His organization of the military force in London against the Chartists in April 1848, and his letter to Sir John Burgoyne on the defences of the country, proved that the old man had still something of his youth about him. But the general char acter of Wellington's last years was rather that of the old age of a great man idealized. To the unbroken splendours of his military career, to his honourable and conscientious labours as a parlia mentary statesman, life unusually prolonged added an evening of impressive beauty and calm. The passions excited during the stormy epoch of the Reform Bill had long passed away. Death came to him at last in its gentlest form. He passed away on Sept. 14, 1852, and was buried under the dome of St. Paul's.