THE ROYAL DUBLIN SOCIETY 53 



was ascribed to the extravagance and idleness of the 

 people, and a recommendation was made that the farm- 

 ing population should be taught by instructors who 

 should travel through the country. He advocated a 

 system of premiums (earning for himself the sobriquet 

 of " Premium " Madden), which he brought under the 

 notice of the Dublin Society, and in 1739 printed a 

 Letter to the Dublin Society on the improving their 

 Fund : and the Manufactures, tillage, &c. in Ireland? 

 Dr. Johnson, who is said to have helped him in his 

 poem entitled " Boulter's Monument," declared that 

 Madden's was a name that Ireland ought to honour. 

 He also appears to have been on friendly terms with 

 Swift, and he was a member of the Physico-Historical 

 Society, under whose auspices he undertook, but did 

 not finish, a history of the County of Fermanagh. 

 Largely through Dr. Madden's influence, the Charter 

 of the Dublin Society was granted. He died on the 

 3 ist of December 1765. The Royal Dublin Society 

 is in possession of a white marble bust, by Van Nost, 

 of one who did so much to foster and encourage its 

 beginnings. 



Madden, rinding at the end of seven or eight years, 

 that the funds of the Society were totally inadequate 

 to the projects it had in view, and to carrying out the 

 ends for which the Society had been formed, penned his 

 momentous Letter to the Dublin Society on the improv- 

 ' ing their Fund, which was published anonymously 

 in 1739. In it, he considered the necessity of the 

 fund being augmented, and the best means for con- 

 tributing to that end ; then, on this being accomplished, 

 the nature of the methods to be adopted ; lastly, the 

 special purposes to which the increased fund should 

 be applied. Madden advocated the application to 



1 Haliday Pamphlets, 1739, cxliv, 3. 



