A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative, but when a nation’s young men are conservatives, its funeral bell is already rung.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Life Thoughts (1858) [ed. Proctor]
(Source)
This was more succinctly summarized in Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, "Political" (1887) [ed. William Drysdale]:When a nation’s young men are conservatives, its funeral bell is already rung.