1846 in Scotland

Incumbents

Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Duncan McNeill until July; then Andrew Rutherfurd
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Adam Anderson; then Thomas Maitland

Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Boyle
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Hope

Events

• January – African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass arrives in Scotland from Ireland to continue his speaking tour of the United Kingdom.
• 22 June – the North British Railway is opened to public traffic between Edinburgh and Berwick-upon-Tweed, the first line to cross the border between Scotland and England. Edinburgh Waverley railway station is opened.
• 15 August – inauguration of Scott Monument in Edinburgh.
• 21 December – Scottish-born surgeon Robert Liston carries out the first operation under anesthesia in Europe, at University College Hospital in London.
• Start of Highland Potato Famine.
• English tourism pioneer Thomas Cook brings 350 people from Leicester on a tour of Scotland.
• Lighthouses at Covesea Skerries, Chanonry Point and Cromarty first illuminated.
• New College, Edinburgh, opens its doors as a theological training college for the Free Church of Scotland.
• Catherine Murray, Countess of Dunmore, commissions "the Paisley Sisters" of Strond on Harris to weave tweed in the Clan Murray tartan, origin of the commercial Harris Tweed industry.
• Engineer Robert William Thomson is granted his first patent for a pneumatic tyre, in France.
• 14-year-old James Clerk Maxwell's first scientific paper is presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
• The John Dewar & Sons company is created by John Dewar, Sr. and his sons
• Charles William George St John's Short Sketches of the Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands is published.

Births

• 1 January – Edward Pinnington, art historian, biographer and journalist
• 10 February – James Burns, shipowner
• 28 February – John F. McIntosh, steam locomotive engineer
• 21 June – Marion Adams-Acton, born Marion Jean Hamilton, novelist

Deaths

• 12 February – Henry Duncan, minister, geologist and social reformer
• 23 May – Charles Ewart, soldier
• Andrew Innes, last survivor of the Buchanites

The arts

• William Motherwell's Poetical Works are published posthumously.
• Carolina, Lady Nairne's Lays from Strathern are published posthumously, revealing her authorship. This includes the Jacobite song "The Hundred Pipers".