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With Henrik Stampe, the Danish–Norwegian absolutist state had a high-ranking civil servant who advocated natural-law principles. In his role as attorney general between 1754 and 1784, Stampe served as an adviser to the king's council—the Danish Chancellery—emphasizing the importance of the interplay between state (royal power) and individual. The "two correlates" concerned viewing society according to the social contract principle, namely as the invisible, implicit contract between all individuals living in a national imagined community, and that community's equally invisible contract with the king/state. Together they were to strive for the common good: the nation's prosperity, or "Glückseligkeit" as it was called in German. Individuals are born free and equal, and their freedom and happiness are also among the goals. Henrik Stampe was strongly influenced by the German philosopher Christian Wolff. The book thus shows that the ideas leading to the Norwegian Constitution—built precisely on the state–individual relationship—were very much alive in civil-service circles in Denmark–Norway since at least the mid-1750s. The book also shows that natural-law-oriented thinking about economic conditions anticipated and ran parallel to that of the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith.

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