The silk growers of Valencia and elsewhere had been ruined, but the looms remained, and the weavers attempted to obtain raw silk from Italy and France. The introduction of raw silk was thereupon forbidden, and most of the weavers went the way of the growers, to idleness and ruin, or across the seas to the Indies. The Cortes of 1555 saw the evil that was being done and, as usual, made a presentment on the subject. They pointed out the paralysis of Spanish industry and the large sums of coin sent out of the country to pay for French and Flemish linens, and ascribed the evil to its secondary and not its primary reason. They {228} say flax-growing is neglected and decayed, and suggest that public lands, where suitable, should be cultivated, and every landowner forced to plant a certain proportion of flax on his estate. It was useless and absurd, of course, as the sumptuary laws limiting the making or wearing of lawns and fine linens had killed the industry, and the coarse linens were still spun and woven at home; so nothing came of it. But the acme of absurdity and political perverseness was reached in the Cortes of 1552, which presented a petition begging that the export of manufactured goods of all sorts to the new Spanish empire in America should be strictly prohibited. They say that the people there are getting their money so easily and becoming so rapidly rich, that they buy such great quantities of Spanish goods as to raise the prices in the Peninsula, "_whereby we who work here cannot live._"