 Just as natural rights and natural law theory had a fluorescence in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, so did the social contract theory. Why is Locke a social contract theorist? Is it merely that this was one prevailing way of thinking about government at the time which Locke blindly adopted? The answer is that there is something about Locke’s project which pushes him strongly in the direction of the social contract. One might hold that governments were originally instituted by force, and that no agreement was involved. Were Locke to adopt this view, he would be forced to go back on many of the things which are at the heart of his project in the Second Treatise, though cases like the Norman conquest force him to admit that citizens may come to accept a government that was originally forced on them. Remember that the Second Treatise provides Locke’s positive theory of government, and that he explicitly says that he must provide an alternative to the view