Nathaniel Mist - Mist's Weekly Journal

Mist's Weekly Journal

Nathaniel Mist's paper was frequently prosecuted, as was its owner and editor, for libel, and yet it published successfully from 1716 to 1737 (without Mist himself for the last three years). Mist was able to stay in business, and at liberty, generally, by being very aware of the line between the allowable and the prohibited speech. He would discuss current scandals, literature, and events frankly, but when the subject was political or touching the affairs of the peerage, he would employ allegory or fictional history. He would print authors talking about lands far away, for example, but readers would understand that the land was actually England. He would have an account of a particular episode in history, such as the Restoration, and imply, of course, that the return of the Stuarts was appropriate. He would publish an account of famous regicides, where the king was a tyrant, and imply that the public needed to take action against the Hanoverian "usurper." Fictions of corrupt ministers would be commentaries on Robert Walpole. Informative stories about how pirates organize their ships would be an analogy to Walpole's running of the British House of Commons. Furthermore, as the government found out (and complained of in 1722), every time they arrested and tried Mist, the popularity of his Journal would increase. There is no way to know what Mist's average weekly circulation was, but it may have been around 8,000 - 10,000 copies a week (Chapman 379).