1799 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Robert Dundas of Arniston
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Robert Blair

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Succoth
• Lord Justice General – The Duke of Montrose
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Braxfield, then Lord Eskgrove

  Events

• 9 January – Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces an income tax of two shillings to the pound to raise funds for Great Britain's war effort in the Napoleonic Wars.
• June – the last militia regiments in the Highland Fencible Corps are raised at about this time, but most are disbanded this year.
• 3 June – publication of The First Statistical Account of Scotland concludes.
• 13 June – Colliers Act frees coal miners from bondage to their employers, the last vestige of serfdom in Scotland.
• 12 July – the Combination Act is passed by Parliament to outlaw trade unions.
• Glasgow Town Council and private benefactors contribute to purchasing grain to relieve the poor at a time of high food prices.
• The Roman Catholic seminary for the Vicariate Apostolic of the Lowland District is transferred from Scalan to Aquhorthies College by George Hay, the Vicar Apostolic.
• Inverbervie Old Bridge, designed by James Burn, is completed.
• George Buchanan's De Jure Regni apud Scotos is translated by Robert Macfarlan as A Dialogue Concerning The Rights of the Crown in Scotland.
• William Wallace becomes the first to publish the concept of the Simson line in mathematics.

  Births

• 6 February – George Arnott Walker-Arnott, botanist
• 13 February – Robert Willis, physician
• 17 February – John Baird, evangelical minister
• 8 June – John Wilson, promoter of British Israelism
• 25 June – David Douglas, botanist
• 8 September – James Bowman Lindsay, inventor
• 5 November – Robert Carruthers, writer
• 18 December – Charles Macfarlane, travel writer and novelist
• 21 December – David Don, botanist
• Undated
• * John Cunningham, architect
• * George Pirie, newspaper publisher and poet
• Approximate date – William Simson, painter best known as a landscapist

  Deaths

• 5 January – John Swinton, Lord Swinton, judge
• 19 January – Peter Williamson, tavern keeper, printer, postmaster, inventor, showman and sometime slave in America
• 26 January
• * Gabriel Christie, general and settler in Montreal
• * Thomas Muir of Huntershill, radical
• 26 May – James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, judge and comparative linguist
• 30 May – Robert McQueen, Lord Braxfield, hanging judge
• 1 June – James Tassie, engraver
• 14 June – Sir Patrick Warrender, 3rd Baronet, of Lochend, army officer and politician
• 15 August – Duncan Davidson, merchant and politician
• 6 December – Joseph Black, physician and chemist
• William Cunninghame of Lainshaw, tobacco merchant
• Lachlan McGillivray, fur trader and planter in the Province of Georgia