1768 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – James Montgomery
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Henry Dundas

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Arniston, the younger
• Lord Justice General – Duke of Queensberry
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Barskimming

  Events

• 10 June – construction of Forth and Clyde Canal begins.
• 10 December – first volumes of Encyclopædia Britannica begin publication in Edinburgh.
• Bridge over River Deveron between Banff and Macduff swept away in flood.
• David Dale begins his own business importing linen yarn from the Dutch Republic to Glasgow.
• Duchal House extended.
• Alloa Waggonway open.

  Births

• 2 May – Zachary Macaulay, abolitionist and statistician
• 3 May – Charles Tennant, chemist and industrialist
• 9 May – James Thomson, Presbyterian minister and editor of Encyclopædia Britannica
• 11 May – David Hamilton, Glasgow architect
• 14 July – James Haldane, soldier and evangelist
• 29 August – William Erskine, Lord Kinneder, scholar and songwriter
• 23 September – William Wallace, mathematician
• 6 November – James Hay Beattie, poet
• 10 November – Thomas Thomson, advocate, antiquarian and archivist

  Deaths

• 15 June – James Short, mathematician and optician
• 1 October – Robert Simson, mathematician
• 12 October – James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton, astronomer