There seems to have been, on the whole, comparatively little express legislation in the way of constitutional changes and few express acts abolishing slavery in the North during this period.[295] The process was a gradual one, proceeding by acts of manumission or gradual abolition, the act of Pennsylvania in 1780 being typical. Slavery does not appear to have ever been made illegal in Pennsylvania by express law but died out in the natural course of events. Hence slaves were found in this State well on toward the middle of the nineteenth century.[296] This goes to show that the abolition of slavery and the admission of the Negro to complete citizenship were the result of a slow evolution of public sentiment. Moore even contends that slavery was never formally abolished in Massachusetts until 1866 when it was agreed on all hands that it was "considered as abolished."[297] Thus the social mind, by a natural and normal development of democratic ideals, arrived unconsciously at the point where it was impossible to harmonize the status of the slave with the prevailing sentiments of the community. The social mind was for this reason often far in advance of the legal status of the Negro as determined by the laws which represented earlier stages of opinion. A case in point is the Massachusetts act of 1788, of which Moore says: "We doubt if anything in human legislation can be found which comes nearer branding color as a crime," and yet this law remained upon the statute books of the State long after it had ceased to be in accord with the feelings and practices of the community and was only repealed in 1834.[298] The hesitancy of the legislators of the different free States to pass express acts of abolition and thus formally to pronounce slavery illegal may have been due in part to the fact that slavery was sanctioned to a certain extent by the constitution and was the "peculiar institution" around which centered the social and economic life of a large number of sister States. The great industrial expansion of the North and West toward the end of the second decade of the century and the increase of population through immigration in time reduced the Negro in the North in point of number to an almost negligible factor. He was swept along with the rising tide of the growing industrial democracy and shared in the general benefits of citizenship accorded to all. But it would give a very superficial idea of the real status of the Negro in the North during this time if we were to base our judgments upon the statistics of slave and free, the various acts for manumission or the vigorous anti-slavery agitation from 1830 on. A closer acquaintance with the actual conditions of the time shows that there was a striking contrast between the theoretical rights and privileges which the Negro was supposed to enjoy by virtue of the constitution and bills of rights and those he really did enjoy.