Mr. Mason was what the lawyers call a “cause-getting man,” like Sir James Scarlett, Brougham’s great opponent at the English bar.  It was said of Scarlett, that he gained his verdicts because there were twelve Scarletts in the jury-box; and Mason so contrived to blend his stronger mind with the minds of the jurymen, that his thoughts appeared to be theirs, expressed in the same simple words and quaint illustrations which they would have used if asked to give their opinions on the case.  It is to be added, that Mason’s almost cynical disregard of ornament in his addresses to the jury gave to an opponent like Webster the advantage of availing himself of those real ornaments of speech which spring directly from a great heart and imagination.  Webster, without ever becoming so supremely plain and simple in style as Mason, still strove to emulate, in his legal statements and arguments, the homely, robust common-sense of his antagonist; but, wherever the case allowed of it, he brought into the discussion an element of un-common sense, the gift of his own genius and individuality, which Mason could hardly comprehend sufficiently to controvert, but which was surely not without its effect in deciding the verdicts of juries.

It is probable that Webster was one of the few lawyers and statesmen that Mason respected.  Mason’s curt, sharp, “vitriolic” sarcasms on many men who enjoyed a national reputation, and who were popularly considered the lights of their time, still remain in the memories of his surviving associates, as things which may be quoted in conversation, but which it would be cruel to put into print.  Of Webster, however, he never seems to have spoken a contemptuous word.  Indeed, Mason, though fourteen years older than Webster, and fighting him at the Portsmouth bar with all the formidable force of his logic and learning, was from the first his cordial friend.  That friendship, early established between strong natures so opposite in character, was never disturbed by any collision in the courts.  In a letter written, I think, a few weeks after he had made that “Reply to Hayne” which is conceded to be one of the great masterpieces of eloquence in the recorded oratory of the world, Webster wrote jocularly to Mason:  “I have been written to, to go to New Hampshire, to try a cause against you next August....  If it were an easy and plain case on our side, I might be willing to go; but I have some of your pounding in my bones yet, and I don’t care about any more till that wears out.”

It may be said that Webster’s argument in the celebrated “Dartmouth College Case,” before the Supreme Court of the United States, placed him, at the age of thirty-six, in the foremost rank of the constitutional lawyers of the country.  For the main points of the reasoning, and for the exhaustive citation of authorities by which the reasoning was sustained, he was probably indebted to Mason, who had previously argued the case before the Superior Court of New Hampshire; but his superiority to Mason was shown in the eloquence, the moral power, he infused into his reasoning, so as to make the dullest citation of legal authority tell on the minds he addressed.