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John Locke (1632-1704) argued that God had given the earth to "mankind in common" but that a person could acquire a limited property right in land (or an animal or naturally growing food) by mixing his or her labor with that object. Thus, "Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. [John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, second treatise, book V, section #27.]

The Lockean theory has had many critics in the centuries since it was advanced. Hastings Rashdall was one such critic. Rashdall believes that the rights of property must be justified on consequentialist grounds rather than on a theory of a priori natural rights. In his essay "The Philosophical Theory of Property" he writes as follows:
What shall we say to this theory? Is it self-evident that a man has a right to all that his labour produces? Rights are meaningless except as the converse of duties. To say that a man has a right to all that his labour produces, means that other people are under a moral obligation to let him enjoy all that his labour produces. Is it self-evident that they ought to do this, even if the consequences to society should be disastrous? Was a party of primitive men -- if we presuppose Locke's unhistorical conception of primitive life -- wandering over an unappropriated prairie, morally bound to allow an individual who had got a few miles beyond them to appropriate all the available apples or acorns or dates? Ought they to starve rather than interfere with his hoard, until it was proved by experience that he had appropriated more than he could consume? And then, if we concede the right to what the labour produces, what about the material with whch he chooses to "mix his labour"? Labour produces nothinig without some material, which is always in the last resort some part of the soil or of the things that grow out of it. May a man mix ever so little labour with ever so much raw material, and yet secure a right over that material for himself and his heirs for all time? May he by merely constructing a ring-fence round some thousand acres of the best soil, or perhaps lightly scratching its surface with a plough, secure that property to himself, his heirs, and assigns for ever? If we concede that his labour gives him the property in it for his lifetime, what about his heirs who have not laboured upon it? Is there any self-evident principle which determines what is to become of it after his death?....

The best way of criticizing Locke's theory is to show that, when thought out, it contradicts itself. Let us suppose that ten men appropriate a desert island, divide it among themselves, and cultivate their respective shares. Each of them has ten sons, and having a taste for "founding a family" leaves his share to the eldest. In the next generation there will be ten landlords and ninety landless men. These men have a sacred, natural right to the fruits of their labour: but how are they to exercise it? They will say to the elder brothers: "We have a right to labour: let us work on your lands." "By all means," the elder brothers will say, "on condition of paying over to us all that the land produces over and above what will keep you and your families." In that way the principle contradicts itself. The rights of property, supposed to be derived from a man's natural right to the fruits of his labour, involves the negation of that right in the non-inheritors of property....

The fundamental question which Locke's theory raises is, whether any principle for the regulation of property or the enjoyment of wealth can claim to be self-evident apart from all considerations of social effects.

It cannot be too strongly insisted that the question of property is only a particular department of the more general question, whether there are any a priori self-evident rights; and that in turn depends upon the question whether there are any duties which can be laid down a priori, and without reference to the social effects of conduct. Rights are meaningless apart from duties; if all duties spring in the last resort from the duty of promoting the general good, then rights must also be shown to spring from the same principle. [Hastings Rashdall, "The Philosophical Theory of Property" in Property: Its Duties and Rights, 1914, p. 44-47]