You can pass a property accessor to the method.

List<Class1> SortBy(List<Class1> toSort, Func<Class1, IComparable> getProp)
{
    if (toSort != null && toSort.Count > 0) {
        return toSort
            .OrderBy(x => getProp(x))
            .ToList();
    }
    return null;
}

You would call it like this:

var result = SortBy(toSort, x => x.maxSpeed);

But you could go one step further and write your own extension method.

public static class CollectionExtensions
{
    public static List<TSource> OrderByAsListOrNull<TSource, TKey>(
        this ICollection<TSource> collection, Func<TSource,TKey> keySelector)

        if (collection != null && collection.Count > 0) {
            return collection
                .OrderBy(x => keySelector(x))
                .ToList();
        }
        return null;
    }
}

Now you can sort like this

List<Class1> sorted = toSort.OrderByAsListOrNull(x => x.maxSpeed);

but also

Person[] people = ...;
List<Person> sortedPeople = people.OrderByAsListOrNull(p => p.LastName);

Note that I declared the first parameter as ICollection<T> because it must fulfill two conditions:

1. It must have a Count property
2. It must be an IEnumerable<T> in order to be able to apply the LINQ method OrderBy.

List<Class1> is an ICollection<T> but also an array Person[] as many other collections.

So far, I have shown how you can read a property. If the method needs to set a property, you need to pass it a setter delegate as well

void ReadAndWriteProperty(Func<Class1, T> getProp, Action<Class1, T> setProp)

Where T is the type of the property.

To get a property, you could probably use a Func<Item, T>:

// I don't know what this method returns so I used "void".
public void ParseData<T>(List<Item> items, Func<Item, T> propertySelector) {
    // as an example, here's how to get the property of the first item in the list
    var firstItemsProperty = propertySelector(items.First());
    ...
}

You can call this method by passing a lambda expression:

ParseData(itemList, x => x.Property1) // "Property1" is a property declared in "Item"

You almost have the right solution already - the only missing piece is how you use the MeritFunctionLine.property property to get the desired value from the CalculationOutput.

In your foreach loop, simply replace the calculation line with

m += Math.Abs(item.property(values) - item.value);

Edit:

Adding Genericity

To address Obsidian Phoenix's comment, you can use this with different classes by making both MeritFunction and MeritFunctionLine generic, so:

public class MeritFunctionLine<TCalcOutput>
{
    public Func<TCalcOutput, double> property { get; set; }
    public double value { get; set; }
    public ComparisonTypes ComparisonType { get; set; }
}

public class MeritFunction<TCalcOutput>
{
    public List<MeritFunctionLine<TCalcOutput>> Lines { get; set; }
    public double Calculate(TCalcOutput values)
    {
        double m = 0;
        foreach (var item in Lines)
        {
            m += Math.Abs(item.property(values) - item.value);
        }
        return m;
    }
}

The rewritten usage example would be

MeritFunction<CalculationOutput> mf = new MeritFunction<CalculationOutput>();
mf.Lines.Add(new MeritFunctionLine<CalculationOutput>() { property = x => x.Property1, value = 90, comparisonType = ComparisonTypes.GreaterThan });
mf.Lines.Add(new MeritFunctionLine<CalculationOutput>() { property = x => x.Property3, value = 50, comparisonType = ComparisonTypes.Equals });

CalculationOutput c1 = new CalculationOutput() { property1 = 1, property2 = 20, property3 = 150, property4 = 500 };
CalculationOutput c2 = new CalculationOutput() { property1 = 15, property2 = 32, property3 = 15, property4 = 45 };

double value1 = mf.Calculate(c1);
double value2 = mf.Calculate(c2);

Some extra convenience

If you have many MeritFunctionLines to add, the syntax above can be a bit tedious. So as a bonus, let's change MeritFunction so that it can be initialized with the list initialization syntax. To do that, we need to make it IEnumerable and give it an Add function:

public class MeritFunction<TCalcOutput> : IEnumerable<MeritFunctionLine<TCalcOutput>>
{
    public List<MeritFunctionLine<TCalcOutput>> Lines { get; set; }

    public MeritFunction()
    {
        Lines = new List<MeritFunctionLine<TCalcOutput>>();
    }

    public void Add(Func<TCalcOutput, double> property, ComparisonTypes ComparisonType, double value)
    {
        Lines.Add(new MeritFunctionLine<CalculationOutput>
        {
            property = property,
            value = value,
            comparisonType = ComparisonType
        });
    }

    public double Calculate(TCalcOutput values)
    {
        double m = 0;
        foreach (var item in Lines)
        {
            m += Math.Abs(item.property(values) - item.value);
        }
        return m;
    }

    public IEnumerator<MeritFunctionLine<TCalcOutput>> GetEnumerator()
    {
        return List.GetEnumerator();
    }

    System.Collections.IEnumerator System.Collections.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        return this.GetEnumerator();
    }
}

Note that the Add method receives the parameters in a different order - you'll understand why when you look at the usage. Quite a bit of extra code, but now creating our MeritFunction is a bit nicer:

MeritFunction<CalculationOutput> mf = new MeritFunction<CalculationOutput>
{
    { x => x.Property1, ComparisonTypes.GreaterThan, 90 },
    { x => x.Property3, ComparisonTypes.Equals,      50 }
};

Note, all code untested. Use at own risk :)