1794 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 Viscount Stormont
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Braxfield

  Events

• 10 February – Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon, authorized to raise the 92nd Regiment of Foot. This year also the Duke becomes Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland.
• May – Habeas corpus suspended. Robert Watt, who has plotted to seize Edinburgh Castle, is tried and executed for treason.
• November – Irish inventor Richard Lovell Edgeworth demonstrates a semaphore line from Donaghadee across the Irish Sea to Portpatrick.
• December – Glasgow Royal Infirmary opens.
• Lords lieutenant appointed permanently across Scotland by royal warrant.
• Glengarry Fencibles formed by Alexander Ranaldson Macdonell of Clan MacDonell of Glengarry, perhaps the first military unit to wear the Glengarry bonnet.
• Original Pentland Skerries lighthouse on Muckle Skerry built, engineered by Thomas Smith with the work superintendend by his stepson Robert Stevenson, the latter's first official work for the Commissioners of Northern Light Houses.
• Oban distillery established by brothers John and Hugh Stevenson.

  Births

• 12 June – John Gibson Lockhart, writer and editor
• 28 October – Robert Liston, pioneering surgeon
• 12 November – Thomas Grainger, civil engineer and surveyor
• 27 December – Alexander Gordon Laing, explorer
• Undated – Robert Edmonstone, painter

  Deaths

• 23 February – James Playfair, neoclassical architect
• 27 April – James Bruce, explorer
• 18 June – James Murray, military officer and administrator
• 23 June – James Graham, quack doctor
• 13 July – James Lind, naval physician
• 20 October – James Adam, architect and furniture designer
• 22 November – Alison Cockburn, writer and literary hostess
• 30 December – Archibald Kennedy, 11th Earl of Cassilis

  The arts

• 8 May – Robert Burns' song Scots Wha Hae published in The Morning Chronicle.
• 25 June – Burns sets out on his second Galloway tour.
• Joseph Ritson's anthology Scottish Song is published.