Commercial banking got its start in New England (as elsewhere in the United States) shortly after the Revolutionary War, when groups of prominent merchants in the region's leading port cities began petitioning their state legislatures for charters of incorporation. Because at that time the grant of a corporate charter conferred special privileges and quasigovernmental authority, legislatures reserved them for projects deemed to be in the public interest. Accordingly, merchants who were seeking charters emphasized the many benefits that banks would bring to their communities. They claimed, for example, that banks would make it possible to obtain credit at reasonable rates of interest, thus ensuring that “the enormous advantages made by the griping Usurer from the Necessities of those who want to borrow Money will be immediately checked & in a great Measure Destroyed.” Banks would also provide the surrounding community with a safe and readily convertible supply of paper money, such that “the Benefits of an increased Medium & the Payment of Taxes & the Negotiation of all other Business will be rendered more safe & easy.”