1751 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George II

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – William Grant of Prestongrange
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Patrick Haldane of Gleneagles, jointly with Alexander Hume

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Arniston the Elder
• Lord Justice General – Lord Ilay
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Tinwald

  Events

• 24 April – John Wesley arrives at Musselburgh, his destination on his first mission to Scotland.
• 21 June – Alexander Geddes from Kinnermony, Banffshire, is executed at Aberdeen for bestiality, becoming the last felon in Scotland to be burnt following execution.
• 1 July – The Cameronians, at this time serving in Ireland, are formally ranked as the 26th Regiment of Foot.
• David Hume settles in Edinburgh and publishes An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
• In the University of Glasgow:
• * Adam Smith is appointed professor of logic.
• * The Medical School is founded.
• John Smith & Son bookshop in Glasgow established, claiming to be the oldest surviving bookseller in the English-speaking world.
• Culter paper mill established.
• First turnpike act for Scotland, for improvement of the road from Edinburgh to South Queensferry.
• Approximate date – bridge built at Bridge of Orchy.

  Births

• 23 April – Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, colonial administrator
• 3 or 29 June – William Roxburgh, surgeon and botanist, "father of Indian botany"
• 2 August – William Adam of Blair Adam, judge and politician
• 8 August – William Leslie, British Army officer
• 10 December – James Donaldson, printer, newspaper publisher and philanthropist
• Donald Campbell, traveler in India and the Middle East
• Approximate date – Helen Craik, novelist and poet

  Deaths

• 16 February – Charles Maitland, politician
• 18 February - Patrick Campbell, politician
• 24 May – William Hamilton, comic poet
• 22 August – Andrew Gordon, Benedictine and inventor
• September – David Fordyce, philosopher

  The arts

• Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair publishes his anti-Hanoverian volume of poems Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich in Edinburgh, including his satire on the aisling form An Airce.
• Tobias Smollett's novel The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle is published.
• Robert Louis Stevenson's book "Kidnapped" is based in 1751.