Considering the manifold clamours, that have been raised from several quarters, against the Fable of the Bees, even after I had published the vindication of it, many of my readers will wonder to see me come out with a second part, before I have taken any further notice of what has been said against the first. Whatever is published, I take it for granted, is submitted to the judgment of all the world that see it; but it is very unreasonable, that authors should not be upon the same footing with their critics. The treatment I have received, and the liberties some gentlemen have taken with me, being well known, the public must be convinced before now, that, in point of civility, I owe my adversaries nothing: and if those, who have taken upon them to school and reprimand me, had an undoubted right to censure what they thought fit, without asking my leave, and to say of me what they pleased, I ought to have an equal privilege to examine their censures, and, without consulting them, to judge in my turn, whether they are worth answering or not. The public must be the umpire between us. From the Appendix that has been added to the first part, ever since the third edition, it is manifest, that I have been far from endeavouring to stifle, either the arguments or the invectives that were made against me; and, not to have left the reader uninformed of any thing extant of either sort, I once thought to have taken this opportunity of presenting him with a list of the adversaries that have appeared in print against me: but as they are in nothing so considerable as they are in their numbers, I was afraid it would have looked like ostentation, unless I would have answered them all, which I shall never attempt. The reason, therefore, of my obstinate silence has been all along, that hitherto I have not been accused of any thing that is criminal or immoral, for which every middling capacity could not have framed a very good answer, from some part or other, either of the vindication or the book itself.