From an engraving on copper, published in Leidens Ramp (The Disaster of Leyden) by Willem Bilderdijk and Matthijs Siegenbeek, Amsterdam, 1808.

Dutch patriot, legal, classical, and historical scholar, sometime Rector Magnificus of the University of Leyden, and publisher of Nouvelles extraordinaires de divers endroits (more commonly known as the Gazette de Leyde and one of the most influential European newspapers of its time), Jean Luzac (1746–1807) became an early, warm, and extremely helpful friend to John Adams during the latter's Dutch mission. He kept a kindly eye on the Adams boys while they studied at Leyden in 1781, printed in generous measure documents and news furnished him by Minister Adams to the advantage of the American cause, and instigated petitions among merchants and others favoring the recognition of American independence.

The ties of the Adams family with Luzac were renewed when John Quincy Adams returned to the Netherlands as American minister in the 1790's, and a substantial correspondence between them ensued. “Last week at Leyden,” John Quincy wrote his father from The Hague, 3 December 1794, “I saw our old friend professor Luzac, who is at this time Rector Magnificus of the University. He received us with great cordiality, and I found him in his political sentiments moderate and rational. The instance is rare, and accordingly he suits neither of the parties in this Country. 'The Tories call him Whig, and Whigs a Tory,' because he neither wishes to be the slave of the ruling power, nor to see his Country liberated by means of being conquered” (Adams Papers). As a result of his outspokenness during the French regime Luzac had to give up all his university connections, and shortly thereafter the Gazette de Leyde was suppressed. In retirement he continued his scholarly and literary labors, but in January 1807 he and other members of his family were killed by the devastating explosion of a powder ship stationed in the Rapenburg near his house.

Upon resigning his rectorship in 1795 Luzac pronounced a Latin Oration on Socrates as a Citizen, which was published the following year and dedicated to John Adams with a warm tribute to Adams' political and intellectual services to his country. A copy of the pamphlet is in the Adams Papers, together with a manuscript English translation in an unidentified hand (Microfilms, Reel No. 226), probably as prepared for publication in the Port Folio, the Philadelphia journal in which a translation appeared serially in April–May 1803. “He is one of the sound hearts and choice Spirits, that I most loved and esteemed in this World,” John Adams told his friend Van der Kemp, who had also known Luzac before emigrating to America. xvTo this, Adams added a little later: “My Wife, My Daughter and my two Sons all knew him and revered him. He is a large Portion of the Salt of the Earth, and if it were not for a few such Lotts, it seems to me, the whole Sodom [of Europe] must soon be burn'd up.” (Letters of 30 April 1806, 29 January 1807, both in Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)

The quotation characterizing Luzac in the caption of the present entry is a translation of the inscription on a small but impressive memorial in the Pieterskerk (see No. 7 above) erected by friends to Luzac's memory in 1809. The University of Leyden and the Gemeente-Archief (Municipal Archives) of that city have for some time been engaged in searching out fugitive Luzac documents to add to or record in the large collection of the papers of this famous scholar and editor now in the University Library.