Law officers edit

• Lord Advocate – Henry Dundas; then Henry Erskine
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Alexander Murray; then Ilay Campbell jointly with Alexander Wight

Judiciary edit

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Arniston, the younger
• Lord Justice General – The Viscount Stormont
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Barskimming

• 1 January – Glasgow Chamber of Commerce is founded by Patrick Colquhoun, the first in Britain.^[1]
• 27 January – The Herald newspaper begins publication as the weekly Glasgow Advertiser (with news of the Peace of Paris); it will become the longest continually-published daily in Britain.^[1]
• 29 March – the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Royal Society of Edinburgh are chartered.^[1]
• Halbeath Railway opens from the colliery at Halbeath (in the Fife Coalfield) to the harbour at Inverkeithing.^[2]
• Elspeth Buchan proclaims herself in Irvine as possessed of heavenly powers, leading to the formation of a Society of Buchanites.

• 5 April – Andrew Geddes, portrait painter and etcher (died 1844 in London)
• 8 April – John Claudius Loudon, horticulturalist (died 1843 in London)
• 24 April – James Lindsay, 24th Earl of Crawford (died 1869 in England)
• 11 June – James Baillie Fraser, travel writer (died 1856)
• 15 June – Donald Mackenzie, explorer in North America (died 1851 in the United States)
• 27 June – Adam Anderson, physicist (died 1846)
• 6 September – George Hogarth, newspaper editor, music critic, musicologist and father-in-law of Charles Dickens (died 1870 in London)
• 22 October – James Henry Keith Stewart, Tory Member of Parliament (died 1836)
• John Finlaison, actuary (died 1860 in London)
• William Glen, poet (died 1826)
• Peter Grant (Pàdraig Grannd nan Oran), Baptist minister and songwriter in Gaelic (died 1867)
• Norman Macleod (Caraid nan Gaidheal), Church of Scotland minister and writer in Gaelic (died 1862)
• Richard Poole, physician, psychiatrist, and phrenologist (died 1871)

• 30 March – William Hunter, anatomist (born 1718; died in London)
• 2 June – Charles Spalding, confectioner and diver (born 1738; died on dive in Dublin Bay)
• 27 August – John Glassford, tobacco merchant (born 1715)

• The Glasgow engraving and publishing firm J. Lumsden and Son, which becomes known for children's books, is founded.