The law did not succeed in checking cohabitation, though of marriages of slaves with white people there is almost no record.[92] There exists no definite information as to the number of mulattoes in the colony during this period, but advertisements for runaway slaves indicate that there were very many of them. The slave register of 1780 for Chester County shows that they constituted twenty per cent. of the slave population in that locality.[93] It must be said that the stigma of illicit intercourse in Pennsylvania would not generally seem to rest upon the masters, but rather upon servants, outcasts, and the lowlier class of whites.[94] Negro slaves were subject to another class of restrictions which were made against them rather as slaves than as black men. These concerned freedom of movement and freedom of action. During the earlier years of the colony's history regulation of the movements of the slaves rested principally in the hands of the owners. The continual complaints about the tumultuous assembling of negroes, to be noticed presently, would seem to indicate that considerable leniency was exercised.[95] But frequently white people lured them away, and harbored and employed them.[96] The law of 1725-1726 was intended specially to stop this. No negro was to go farther than ten miles from home without written leave from his master, under penalty of ten lashes on his bare back. Nor was he to be away from his master's house, except by special leave, after nine o'clock at night, nor to be found in tippling-houses, under like penalty. For preventing these things counter-restrictions were imposed upon white people. They were forbidden to employ such negroes, or knowingly to harbor or shelter them, except in very unseasonable weather, under penalty of thirty shillings for every twenty-four hours. Finally it was provided that negroes were not to meet together in companies of more than four. This last seems to have remained a dead letter.[97]