foreclosure of liens upon the lands of defendants.
On the next day, June 26, 1937, the defendants, as well as the supervisors of the district as interveners, filed motions for new trial. These motions were afterwards amended. Among the grounds set up for vacating the judgment, was one questioning the right of E. K. Atwood as relator to maintain the suit. On July 5, 1937, these motions were overruled, and at that time the judge of the court formally signed the judgment, in which it was recited that same was pronounced by the court on June 26, 1937. Notice of appeal was given by both the, defendants and interveners, and the case was appealed to the Court of Civil Appeals.
The 45th Legislature, at its First Called Session, on June 28, 1937, repealed subdivision (i) of Article 8017 of the Revised Statutes of 1925, under which the cause was instituted by Atwood as relator. This Act contained no saving clause. The emergency clause of the Act was as follows : “The fact that many racketeers and bond scalpers have used the existing law as an instrument of oppression in order to obtain the land of many landowners in this State located in Levee Districts and as a result many citizens of Texas have lost their land and become homeless, and the further fact of the nearness of the close of this present Legislature create an emergency and an imperative public necessity that the Constitutional Rule requiring bills to be read on three several days in each House be suspended and the Rule is hereby suspended, and that this Act take effect immediately from and after its passage, and it is so enacted.” Acts 45th Leg., 1st Called Sess., c. 38, § 2.
This Act became effective September 28, 1937, while the cause was pending in the Court of Civil Appeals. ' Afterwards, the Court of Civil Appeals affirmed the judgment of the district court. 124 S.W.2d 943.
We have reached the conclusion that the effect of the Act of September 28, 1937, was to work an abatement of this suit, and this makes it unnecessary to discuss other questions.
It is almost universally recognized that if a statute giving a special remedy is repealed, without a saving clause in favor of pending suits, all suits must stop where the repeal finds them; and, if final relief has not been granted before the repeal goes into effect; it cannot be granted thereafter. A like general rule is that if a right to recover depends entirely upon a statute, its repeal deprives the court of jurisdiction over the subject matter. Phil H. Pierce Co. v. Watkins, 114 Tex. 153, 263 S.W. 905; Galveston, H. & H. Ry. Co. v. Anderson, Tex.Civ.App., 229 S.W. 998, writ refused, and authorities there cited; Goodrich v. Wallis, Tex.Civ.App., 143 S.W. 285; State ex rel. Shaw v. Southern Anthracite Coal Co., 131 Ark. 593, 198 S.W. 126; State of South Carolina v. Gaillard, 101 U.S. 433, 437, 25 L.Ed. 937.
These rules are controlling here. Subdivision (i) of the Act of 1925 manifestly conferred only a special remedy or privilege upon holders of bonds of a levee improvement district. While delinquent taxes were primarily due the district as such, and their collection rested with the district and its officials alone, said provision of the law conferred upon a bondholder the right to make a district a party to a suit to enforce collection of delinquent taxes. In other words, the law in effect constituted a bondholder a statutory relator, for the purpose of instituting and prosecuting suits in the name of the district, when the district, through its officials, had failed to do so. The bonds involved were issued in 1919, long before subdivision (i) of the Act of 1925 was enacted. The law at that time, as well as the Act of 1925, gave full and ample power to the district to collect delinquent taxes. The purchaser of bonds acquired such rights as the law existing in 1919 afforded. After the repeal of subdivision (i) they still retained such rights as they acquired by pur- ■ chase and such rights as were afforded them under the general rules of equity. The repeal took away no right acquired by contract, but only destroyed the special remedial privilege afforded by subdivision (i). As was aptly said in State of South Carolina v. Gaillard, supra: “It is enough if the contract is ‘left with the same force and effect, including the substantial means of enforcement, which existed when it was made. The guaranty of the Constitution gives it protection to that extent.’ ”
It is our conclusion that the suit, having been brought by a relator under special statutory authority, wholly collapsed when the statute authorizing its prosecution by the relator was repealed. We have the anomalous situation presented here of the