The Canadians were a conquered people, but they had found the British king no tyrant and they had experienced the paradox of being freer under the conqueror than they had been under their own sovereign.
The last days of French rule in Canada were disgraced by corruption and tyranny almost unbelievable.

The Canadian peasant had been cruelly robbed and he had conceived for his French rulers a dislike which appears still in his attitude towards the motherland of France.

For his new British master he had assuredly no love, but he was no longer dragged off to war and his property was not plundered.

He was free, too, to speak his mind.

During the first twenty years after the British conquest of Canada the Canadian French matured indeed an assertive liberty not even dreamed of during the previous century and a half of French rule.
The British tyranny which Washington pictured in Canada was thus not very real.