1782 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Henry Dundas;
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Alexander Murray

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 23 January – local Laird George Ludovic Houston invites purchase of marked plots of land which, when built upon, form the planned town of Johnstone, to provide employment for his thread and cotton mills, and one of the latter is erected by Corse, Burns & Co.
• 1 July – Act of Proscription 1746 repealed, permitting wearing of Highland dress and arms.
• Muslin first woven in Scotland by James Monteith at Anderston.

  Births

• 2 February – James Chalmers, printer, publisher and bookseller, claimed inventor of the adhesive postage stamp
• 17 March – Andrew Halliday, physician, reformer and writer
• 16 April – William Jerdan, journalist
• 15 August – James Smith of Jordanhill, merchant, antiquarian and architect
• 7 September – Susan Edmonstone Ferrier, novelist
• 7 October – Charles Maclaren, editor and geologist
• Grace Kennedy, writer of religious novels

  Deaths

• 18 January – Sir John Pringle, military physician
• 4 March – Margaret Lindsay Ramsay, noblewoman, second wife of Allan Ramsay
• 13 October – John Farquharson, Jesuit
• 10 December – Alexander Spiers, tobacco merchant
• 27 December – Henry Home, Lord Kames, advocate and philosopher

  The arts

• Oxenfoord Castle is rebuilt to designs by Robert Adam.
• Robert Burns writes the poem "Comin' Thro' the Rye".

  Sport

• First race run at original Hamilton Park Racecourse.