I’ve been reading Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography of Benjamin Franklin lately and just came across a letter Franklin wrote to his English friend Joseph Priestly in late 1775:

Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is 20,000 pounds a head… During the same time, 60,000 children have been born in America. From these data his mathematical head will easily calculate the time and expense necessary to kill us all.

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