This whole Dale Farm business is a sorry mess and, as I write this, is being streamed live over the internet. Yes, the law is equal for everyone, and yes, the planning laws must be respected by all, without any exception. However, it seems a frightful pity that roughly £20 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent on the eviction so far. Couldn’t some compromise have been worked out? Couldn’t we have saved that money, and found some solution acceptable to all? Of course it is all far too late for that. The law has taken its course and the law once it gets going is difficult to stop, or so it seems. This should be a warning to us all about the dangers of legalism. Law of its very nature is impersonal, but it ought, surely, to have some reference to the concept of mercy. The children of Israel had a law, a very complex and seemingly exhaustive code, designed to cover most situations that might arise. But you can never cover all possible eventualities, as St Thomas Aquinas himself admitted (see Summa I II, 96, 6), and so one needs to have some concept of mercy or leeway. This is what Exodus (22:20-26) has to say, coincidentally in a passage that will be read this Sunday: